John Henry Newman
John Henry Newman was an English Catholic theologian, academic, philosopher, historian, writer, and poet. He was previously an Anglican priest, and after his conversion to Catholicism, became a cardinal. He was an important figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century, and was known nationally by the mid-1830s. He was a member of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri and founded the first house of that congregation in England.
Originally an evangelical academic at the University of Oxford and priest in the Church of England, Newman was drawn to the high church tradition of Anglicanism. He became one of the more notable leaders of the Oxford Movement, an influential grouping of Anglicans who wished to restore to the Church of England many Catholic beliefs and liturgical rituals from before the English Reformation. In this, the movement had some success. After publishing his Tract 90 in 1841, Newman later wrote: "I was on my death-bed, as regards my membership with the Anglican Church."
In 1845, Newman resigned his teaching post at Oxford University, and, joined by some but not all of his followers, officially left the Church of England 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 cause of the Catholic Church in England. He was instrumental in the founding of the Catholic University of Ireland in 1854, which later became University College Dublin.
Newman was also a literary figure: his major writings include the Tracts for the Times, his autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua, the Grammar of Assent, and the poem The Dream of Gerontius, 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".
Newman's beatification was proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI on 19 September 2010 during 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. On All Saints Day, Saturday 1 November 2025, Saint Cardinal John Henry Newman was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Pope Leo XIV. He was also named co-patron of Catholic education, joining Saint Thomas Aquinas. He is the 38th saint to be named a Doctor of the Church. He is the fifth saint from London, after Thomas Becket, Thomas More, Edmund Campion and Polydore Plasden.
Early life and education
Newman was born on 21 February 1801 in the City of London, the eldest of a family of three sons and three daughters. His father, John Newman, was a banker with Ramsbottom, Newman and Company in Lombard Street. His mother, Jemima, was descended from a notable family of Huguenot refugees in England, founded by the engraver, printer and stationer Paul Fourdrinier. Francis William Newman was a younger brother. His younger sister, Harriet Elizabeth, married Thomas Mozley, also prominent in the Oxford Movement. The family lived in Southampton Street in Bloomsbury and bought a country retreat in Ham, near Richmond, in the early 1800s.At the age of seven Newman was sent to Great Ealing School conducted by George Nicholas. There George Huxley, father of Thomas Henry Huxley, taught mathematics, and Walter Mayers taught classics. Newman took no part in the casual school games. He was a great reader of the novels of Walter Scott, then in course of publication, and of Robert Southey. Aged 14, he read sceptical works by Thomas Paine, David Hume and perhaps Voltaire.
Evangelical
At the age of 15, during his last year at school, Newman converted to Evangelical Christianity, an incident of which he wrote in his Apologia that it was "more certain than that I have hands or feet". Almost at the same time the bank Ramsbottom, Newman and Co. crashed, though it paid its creditors, and his father left to manage a brewery. Mayers, who had himself undergone a conversion in 1814, lent Newman books from the English Calvinist tradition. "It was in the autumn of 1816 that Newman fell under the influence of a definite creed and received into his intellect impressions of dogma never afterwards effaced." He became an evangelical Calvinist and held the typical belief that the Pope was the antichrist under the influence of the writings of Thomas Newton, as well as his reading of Joseph Milner's History of the Church of Christ. Mayers is described as a moderate, Clapham Sect Calvinist, and Newman read William Law as well as William Beveridge in devotional literature. He also read The Force of Truth by Thomas Scott.Although to the end of his life, Newman looked back on his conversion to Evangelical Christianity in 1816 as the saving of his soul, he began to shift away from his early Calvinism. As Eamon Duffy puts it, "He came to see Evangelicalism, with its emphasis on religious feeling and on the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone, as a Trojan horse for an undogmatic religious individualism that ignored the Church's role in the transmission of revealed truth, and that must lead inexorably to subjectivism and skepticism."
At university
Newman's name was entered at Lincoln's Inn. He was, however, sent shortly to Trinity College, Oxford, where he studied widely. His anxiety to do well in the final schools produced the opposite result; he broke down in the examination, under Thomas Vowler Short, and so graduated as a BA "under the line".Desiring to remain in Oxford, Newman then took private pupils and read for a fellowship at Oriel College, then "the acknowledged centre of Oxford intellectualism". He was elected a fellow at Oriel on 12 April 1822. Edward Bouverie Pusey was elected a fellow of the same college in 1823.
Anglican ministry
On 13 June 1824, Newman was made an Anglican deacon at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. Ten days later he preached his first sermon at Holy Trinity Church in Over Worton, where his former teacher, the Reverend Walter Mayers, was curate. On Trinity Sunday, 29 May 1825, he was ordained a priest at Christ Church Cathedral by the Bishop of Oxford, Edward Legge. He became, at Pusey's suggestion, curate of St Clement's Church, Oxford. Here, for two years, he was engaged in parochial work 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 group of Oriel Noetics, a group of independently thinking dons with a strong belief 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 returned as a tutor to Oriel, and the same year Richard Hurrell Froude, described 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, and from him gained a definite idea of the Christian Church as institution: "a Divine appointment, and as a substantive body, independent 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 Member of Parliament for the university: Newman opposed Peel on personal grounds. In 1827 Newman was a preacher at Whitehall.
Oxford Movement
In 1828, Newman supported and secured the election of Edward Hawkins as Provost of Oriel over John Keble. In the same year Newman was appointed vicar of St Mary's University Church, to which the benefice of Littlemore was attached, and Pusey was made Regius Professor of Hebrew.At this date, though Newman was still nominally associated with the Evangelicals, his views were gradually assuming a higher ecclesiastical tone. George Herring considers that the death of his sister Mary in January had a major impact on Newman. In the middle part of the year he worked to read the Church Fathers thoroughly.
While local secretary of the Church Missionary Society, Newman circulated an anonymous letter suggesting a method by which Anglican clergy might practically oust Nonconformists from all control of the society. This resulted in his being dismissed from the post on 8 March 1830; and three months later Newman withdrew from the Bible Society, completing his move away from the low church group. In 1831–1832, Newman became the "Select Preacher" before the university. In 1832 his difference with Hawkins as to the "substantially religious nature" of a college tutorship became acute and prompted his resignation.
Mediterranean travels
In December 1832, Newman accompanied Archdeacon Robert Froude and his son Hurrell on a tour in southern Europe on account of the latter's health. On board the mail steamship Hermes they visited Gibraltar, Malta, the Ionian Islands and, subsequently, Sicily, Naples and Rome, where Newman made the acquaintance of Nicholas Wiseman. In a letter home he described Rome as "the most wonderful place on Earth", but the Roman Catholic Church as "polytheistic, degrading and idolatrous".During the course of this tour, Newman wrote most of the short poems which a year later were printed in the Lyra Apostolica. From Rome, instead of accompanying the Froudes home in April, Newman returned to Sicily alone. He fell dangerously ill with gastric or typhoid fever at Leonforte, but recovered, with the conviction that God still had work for him to do in England. Newman saw this as his third providential illness. In June 1833 he left Palermo for Marseille in an orange boat, which was becalmed in the Strait of Bonifacio. Here, Newman wrote the verses "Lead, Kindly Light" which later became popular as a hymn.