THE CONTEMPLATIVES HIDDEN IN A HIGH-RISE AN ENCOUNTER WITH THE LITTLE SISTERS OF JESUS IN EAST LONDON PAGE 7

No. 6447

www.catholicherald.co.uk

March 19 2010 £1.20 (Republic of Ireland €1.70)

Pope to beatify Newman at Coventry airport Details of Pope Benedict XVI’s four-day visit to Britain unveiled this week by the Government

ARRIVAL 16/09/10

MEETS QUEEN AT HOLYROODHOUSE

MASS IN GLASGOW

ADDRESS AT WESTMINSTER HALL

LAMBETH PALACE

PRAYER VIGIL IN LONDON

BEATIFICATION MASS IN COVENTRY

DEPARTURE 19/09/10

The precise itinerary of Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain has yet to be released but Government and Church officials have confirmed that it will include visits to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Coventry and London

Photos: PA

BY SIMON CALDWELL

POPE BENEDICT XVI will waive his own rules by beatifying Cardinal John Henry Newman himself, it was announced this week.

He will preside at the ceremony at Coventry airport during a fourday visit to England and Scotland that starts on September 16.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster said the beatification would be the “major” event of a visit.

“To see him [Newman] declared ‘Blessed’ – a step towards sainthood – will be a very, very important moment,” he said. “Cardinal John Henry Newman is a figure of great literary culture, a poet and a pastor. He is a towering figure in English history over the last 200 years. Pope Benedict has a particular attentiveness to the writings of Cardinal Newman. He is making an exception to his own rules to do this... this will be the first beatification he has carried out as Pope.

“I think one of the things that interests the Pope about Cardinal Newman is his witness of a journey to God and his writings on conscience.”

The Archbishop said that sometimes Cardinal Newman stood accused of interpreting conscience in a liberal and subjective way when in reality he taught that conscience could only be formed “when we stand before God”.

He explained that under rules devised by Pope Benedict all beatifications must be performed by a cardinal in the diocese where the candidate died.

The announcement of the Pope’s decision to personally beatify Cardinal Newman was welcomed by Fr Richard Duffield, the Provost of the Birmingham Oratory, the community Newman founded, and actor of the Cause for the cardinal’s canonisation.

“The Holy Father’s life-long devotion to Newman has made a profound contribution to understanding the depth and significance of our founder’s legacy,” he said. “His decision to beatify Newman in person confers a unique blessing upon the English Oratories and all who have drawn inspiration from Newman’s life and work.

“We joyfully look forward to welcoming the Holy Father, as well as the many pilgrims and visitors who will come to the beatification ceremony and visit Newman’s shrine at the Birmingham Oratory.”

The papal visit was announced by Queen Elizabeth II on Tuesday ahead of a press conference at the Foreign Office attended by Archbishop Nichols, Cardinal Keith O’Brien and Jim Murphy, Scottish Secretary and Minister with responsibility for the trip.

A statement from Buckingham Palace said: “At the invitation of

Her Majesty The Queen, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI will pay a papal visit to the United Kingdom from the 16th-19th September 2010. His Holiness will arrive in Edinburgh on Thursday, 16th of September and will be received by HM The Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh at the Palace of Holyroodhouse. His Holiness will also visit Glasgow, London and Coventry during the four-day papal visit.”

It will be the first state visit by a pope as the 1982 visit by Pope John Paul II was classed as a pastoral visit because it coincided with the Falklands War and the Vatican was keen not to be drawn into political controversies. Mr Murphy, a

Catholic, said the visit would be a “truly unique” event. “I am really excited that the Pope will be coming to Scotland and his plane will land first on Scottish soil,” he said.

He said he hoped the occasion would be an opportunity for the Government to strengthen ties with the Holy See on such matters as alleviating world poverty and combating climate change. “I hope the visit provides a platform for the role of faith in transforming and enriching society,” he added.

Archbishop Nichols took the opportunity, however, to criticise the Government’s equality agenda as marked by “good intentions” but “misjudgements”. He said one of the things the Pope will wish to explore during his trip will be the “interface between reason and faith” and said London was the ideal place to do this. The Pontiff is likely to expound his views on such subjects during an address he will deliver to a “civic audience” from the site of trials of such martyrs as Ss Thomas More and Edmund Campion in Westminster Hall, London.

Archbishop Nichols said: “I believe people in this country will recognise the Pope as an eloquent and profound and gentle teacher of all that is right.”

Other key events will include a public Mass in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, a prayer vigil

Continued on Page 3

Canadian Anglican parishes ask Vatican for Personal Ordinariate

BY SIMON CALDWELL

MORE than 40 breakaway Anglican parishes in Canada have decided to convert en masse to the Catholic Church, it emerged this week.

They have voted to take up the offer made by Pope Benedict XVI in November that permits vicars and their entire congregations to cross the Tiber while keeping many of their Anglican traditions, including married priests.

The leaders of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada – a member of the breakaway Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) – have sent a petition to the Vatican requesting full communion with Rome through the implementation of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus.

In their petition to Cardinal William Levada, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, three Canadian bishops expressed their desire to “seek a communal and ecclesial way of being Anglican Catholics in communion with the Holy See, at once treasuring the full expression of Catholic faith and treasuring our tradition within which we have come to this moment”.

“We have all read and studied with care the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus with the complementary norms and the accompanying commentary and now in response to your invitation to contact your dicastery to begin the process you lay out, we respectfully ask that the apostolic constitution be implemented in Canada,” the bishops said.

The Canadians are the fourth – but second largest – group of Anglican churches to have taken up the Pope’s offer, with its request following those of TAC groups in Britain, Australia and the United States.

Letters: Page 13

First black US priest in line for sainthood

Susan Boyle shakes hands with the Priests

BY STAFF REPORTER

MOVES ARE under way to make the first black American priest a saint.

The Archdiocese of Chicago is introducing the cause for canonisation of Fr Augustine Tolton, a former slave who escaped from Brush Creek in Missouri to join the Union Army in the American Civil War. He later tried to become a priest but could not find a US seminary that would accept him. He was finally accepted by the Pontifical College of the Propagation of the Faith in Rome, which trained seminarians for missionary work around the world. After six years of study there Augustine was ordained on April 24 1886, at St John Lateran Basilica in Rome.

Officials felt he should be a missionary in his own country, not in Africa. He returned to the US and gained a reputation for holiness in spite of the racism he suffered.

BY ANNA ARCO

TWO CATHOLIC singing sensations have met in Leipzig on a German television programme.

Susan Boyle, the star of the Britain’s Got Talent from West Lothian, met the singing trio The Priests when the four performers sang on the same television programme.

The Priests, a group that comprises two brothers and their friend who are priests in

Northern Ireland, asked to meet Miss Boyle, a devout Catholic.

Fr Eugene O’Hagan, Fr Martin O’Hagan and Fr David

Delgary admitted they were fans of Miss Boyle.

They later posted a photo of the meeting on the microblogging site, Twitter.

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