Cardinal Newman to lie in state before beatification
The remains of Cardinal Newman - likely to be the first non-martyred Englishman to become a saint since before the Reformation - are to lie in state during the run-up to his beatification, it was announced today.
John Henry Newman will be exhumed from his grave at Rednal in Worcestershire and will lie in state in the Upper Cloister Hall at the Birmingham Oratory on 31 October and 1 November. He will be reinterred on 2 November.
Cardinal Newman was born in London in 1801 and converted to Roman Catholicism when he was 44. He settled in Birmingham where he founded the first English Oratory and died in 1890.
The Vatican is close to beatifying Newman because Jack Sullivan, a deacon from Boston, Massachusetts, was cured of a crippling spinal disease after praying to him. Newman needs one more miracle attributed to him before he is declared a saint. The last Englishman to be canonised who was not a martyr was St Thomas de Cantilupe of Hereford who died in 1282.
Peter Jennings, press secretary at the Birmingham Oratory, said: "The Board of Theologians met to consider the miraculous nature of the cure of Deacon Sullivan. They have asked for more time to study the cause for beatifying Cardinal Newman."
