Prayer for Canonization

     Eternal Father, you led John Henry Newman to follow the kindly light of Truth, and he obediently responded to your heavenly calls at any cost. As writer, preacher, counsellor and educator, as pastor, Oratorian, and servant of the poor he laboured to build up your Kingdom.
     Grant that through your Vicar on earth we may hear the words, 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter into the company of the canonized saints.
May you manifest your Servant's power of intercession by even extraordinary answers to the prayers of the faithful throughout the world. We pray particularly for the following intentions in his name and in the name of Jesus Christ your Son.
      We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Please report any favours received to:
The Postulator, The Oratory, Hagley Road, Birmingham B16 81UE, England.

     John Henry Newman was born on February 21, 1801 in London. At Ealing School he underwent a spiritual conversion which set him on the road to perfection. After undergraduate study at Trinity College, Oxford, he was elected Fellow of Oriel College. Ordained in the Church of England, he became Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford, where his spiritual influence on his parishioners and the undergraduates was enormous.
     After 1833 he became the leader of the spiritual renewal known as the Oxford Movement. His studies of the Fathers of the Church led him to the conclusion that the Roman Catholic Church was the 'One Fold of Christ.' After a long interior struggle he was received into the Catholic Church on October 9, 1845 by Blessed Dominic Barberi at Littlemore, where he had retired to live a semi-monastic life.
     Ostracized by relatives and friends he was ordained priest in Rome and returned to England to found in Birmingham the first Oratorian Congregation in England. This was followed by a second Oratorian House in London. He became Rector of the Catholic University in Ireland and founded the Oratory School in Birmingham. In 1864 he published his Apologia pro Vita Sua, in which he vindicated his honesty in the Church of England and defended the Church of Rome.
     He worked tirelessly for the poor of his parish, and carried on an enormous correspondence, helping countless persons both Catholic and non-Catholic with their religious difficulties. He suffered much from the misunderstandings, suspicions and opposition of some ecclesiastical authorities.
     In 1879 Pope Leo XIII made him a cardinal to the joy of all of England. At his death in 1890 it was said that he more than any other person had changed the attitude of non- Catholics to Catholics. From 15,000 to 20,000 persons lined the streets as his body was borne to Rednal, eight miles away, for peaceful burial. The Cork Examiner affirmed, 'Cardinal Newman goes to his grave with singular honour of being by all creeds and classes acknowledged as the just man made perfect'.