At first sight it might seem strange that Pope Benedict XVI should come to Britain with the specific purpose of nudging towards sanctity a man who died 120 years ago and spent a large part of his adult life sequestered, first behind the walls of Oxford colleges and latterly at an oratory for Roman Catholic priests in Birmingham.But John Henry Newman (1801-1890) was no ordinary Catholic. He has claims to being the most influential and revered English-speaking religious thinker and spiritual writer since the Reformation.
Whether he was also worthy of sainthood is another matter. He himself did not think so: "I have no tendency to be a saint," he wrote. "It is a sad thing to say so. Saints are not literary men."Well, he would say that since, say his critics, sainthood is not exactly something you can lobby for. And he is not there yet: the beatification that will take place in Birmingham this Sunday is the penultimate stage in the process.
At least one more miracle will be required in Newman's name before the Vatican's quaint and labyrinthine investigation is complete, though there are many in the English-speaking Roman Catholic world who want him to become the first post-Reformation English saint. Benedict himself is a fan.
In all this, Newman's faults tend to be glossed over. Essentially a donnish intellectual, he caused scandal in early-Victorian England for resigning as vicar of Oxford's University Church of St Mary and becoming a member of what was then widely regarded as an alien and superstitious, hostile religion, subversive and treacherous to every instinct of true-born Englishmen.
It was an act of no small courage, costing him his career and reputation within Anglicanism – the Oxford Movement, of which he was a part, nearly split the Church of England. Some of his family never spoke to him again. But Newman was also a polemicist, sometimes petty and disputatious, tenacious in his feuds and profoundly possessive of his friends. He may also have been gay.
"Newman is being beautified as much as beatified," said the Catholic writer John Cornwell, Newman's latest biographer. "He is right about literary men not making saints: we're self-absorbed, vain and egotistical, aren't we?"
And Newman could write like a dream, albeit in a high Victorian style. He is accessible and he's still read today, not least by educated, English-speaking Catholics, an important audience for the Vatican to keep on side. If anything, he is even better known in the US, where Newman clubs are scattered across campuses.
Frank Turner, a professor at Yale and another Newman biographer, said: "I think his is the popularity of the convert. He showed you could move from being an Anglican to become a Catholic and justify it intellectually. And, of course, he was a 'non-ethnic' Catholic, an Anglo-Saxon, not from the Irish or Italian ghettos.
"Would I have liked to meet him? Well, he could be very charming if you did not disagree with him."
His writing is subtle enough also for both sides of the Catholic church to feel comfortable with him. Liberals can feel he's really one of them with his ecclesiology and suspicion of papal authority. His most famous aphorism: "I shall drink to the Pope, if you please – still, to conscience first and to the Pope afterwards," reassures them, placing informed individual rational thought ahead of blind obedience.
Less well known is that the quote comes at the end of Newman's public letter to the Duke of Norfolk, England's most senior lay Catholic, which accepts papal infallibility but with the tacit assurance that an English aristocrat need not be too troubled by it. The duke subsequently lobbied for Newman to be made a cardinal.
At the same time, conservatives can reassure themselves that Newman is really one of them: a firm supporter of the one true faith and of obedience to the church. It is they who have lobbied most vehemently for his canonisation. They have also tended to round strongly on Newman's critics. Turner found his book vilified when he argued that Newman's most famous work, the Apologia Pro Vita Sua (A Defence of One's Life), an account of his spiritual journey and conversion, may not have been entirely accurate.
Turner also raised the question of whether Newman was a homosexual, though concluding there is no evidence that he was. In an era when men wrote fulsomely to each other, Newman's letters can cloy to modern audiences who assume all relationships must be physical. He surrounded himself with a sometimes camp high church culture and could be rancorous and censorious when friends got married. Most famously, he insisted on being buried beside his friend Ambrose St John: "I was his first and last … from the very first he loved me with an intensity … which was unaccountable."
Newman's critics suggest a better candidate for sainthood would be Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, his contemporary and bitter rival, also a convert, but one who was both well-connected in society and well-known among the poor. Famously, Manning played a part in ending the 1889 London dock strike and was actively concerned with social issues. But he lacked Newman's charm – photographs show a pinched, censorious figure in contrast to Newman's ethereal, gentle smile – and he lacks polemical champions.
Newman remains elusive, never more so than when his grave was opened in 2008 so his body could be transferred to his old church, the Birmingham Oratory, in preparation for the pope's visit. The body was found to have entirely disintegrated: the old boy having craftily attempted to evade sanctification by arranging to be buried in rotting compost. Nevertheless, he'll be thrust back into the limelight once more on Sunday.
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