On 12 May 1879, Pope Leo XIII raised John Henry Newman to the Sacred College of Cardinals. The biglietto which he received from the Secretariat of State notifying him of the Holy Father’s decision caused Newman to make one of his most significant speeches in reply.

It was the plan of the Duke of Norfolk, one of Newman’s advocates in England, to ask Pope Leo to acknowledge Newman’s loyalty to the Roman Church – which had been unjustly called into question by some of his fellow Catholics – by making him a cardinal. Yet even before his election to the papacy, then then-Archbishop Pecci had come to know of Newman’s influence through the Oxford Movement.