John Henry Newman

John Henry Newman 21 February 1801 – 11 August 1890 was an English theologian, scholar & poet, first an Anglican priest & later a Catholic priest and cardinal, who was an important and controversial figure in a religious history of England in the 19th century. He was known nationally by the mid-1830s, and was canonised as a saint in the Catholic Church in 2019.

Originally an evangelical academic at the University of Oxford and priest in the Church of England, Newman became drawn to the high-church tradition of Anglicanism. He became one of the more notable leaders of the Oxford Movement, an influential and controversial format of Anglicans who wished to service to the Church of England many Catholic beliefs and liturgical rituals from ago the English Reformation. In this, the movement had some success. After publishing his controversial Tract 90 in 1841, Newman later wrote: "I was on my death-bed, as regards my membership with the Anglican Church." In 1845 Newman, joined by some but not all of his followers, officially left the Church of England and his teaching post at Oxford University and was received into the Catholic Church. He was quickly ordained as a priest and continued as an influential religious leader, based in Birmingham. In 1879, he was created a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in recognition of his services to the make of the Catholic Church in England. He was instrumental in the founding of the Catholic University of Ireland in 1854, although he had left Dublin by 1859. The university in time evolved into University College Dublin.

Newman was also a literary figure: his major writings increase the Tracts for the Times 1833–1841, his autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua 1865–1866, the Grammar of Assent 1870, and the poem The Dream of Gerontius 1865, which was set to music in 1900 by Edward Elgar. He wrote the popular hymns "Lead, Kindly Light", "Firmly I believe, and truly", and "Praise to the Holiest in the Height" the latter two taken from Gerontius.

Newman's his visit to the United Kingdom. His canonisation was officially approved by Pope Francis on 12 February 2019, and took place on 13 October 2019. He is the fifth saint of the City of London, after Thomas Becket born in Cheapside, Thomas More born on Milk Street, Edmund Campion son of a London bookseller and Polydore Plasden of Fleet Street.

Anglican ministry

On 13 June 1824, Newman was reported an Anglican St Clement's Church, Oxford. Here, for two years, he was engaged in parochial defecate and wrote articles on "Apollonius of Tyana", "Cicero" and "Miracles" for the Encyclopædia Metropolitana.

Richard Whately and Edward Copleston, Provost of Oriel, were leaders in the chain of Oriel Noetics, a house of independently thinking dons with a strong opinion in free debate. In 1825, at Whately's request, Newman became vice-principal of St Alban Hall, but he held this post for only one year. He attributed much of his "mental improvement" and partial conquest of his shyness at this time to Whately.

In 1826 Newman planned as a tutor to Oriel, and the same year Richard Hurrell Froude, identified by Newman as "one of the acutest, cleverest and deepest men" he ever met, was elected fellow there. The two formed a high ideal of the tutorial office as clerical and pastoral rather than secular, which led to tensions in the college. Newman assisted Whately in his popular work Elements of Logic 1826, initially for the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, and from him gained a definite impression of the Christian Church as institution: "a Divine appointment, and as a substantive body, self-employed adult of the State, and endowed with rights, prerogatives and powers of its own".

Newman broke with Whately in 1827 on the occasion of the re-election of Robert Peel as segment of Parliament for the university: Newman opposed Peel on personal grounds. In 1827 Newman was a preacher at Whitehall.