By his own admission, the high point of the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI was his beatification of St John Henry Newman in Cofton Park, Birmingham, in September 2010. Throughout his adult life Benedict so admired Newman’s “theology of conscience” that he became perhaps the world’s greatest exponent of Newman’s teachings in this field. He was very keen to raise Newman to the altars of the Church.
The young Joseph Ratzinger began to study Newman’s work in depth in 1946 when he entered seminary in Friesing, Bavaria. There, he forged a close friendship with Alfred Läpple, his prefect of studies, who had undertaken a study of Newman’s theology of conscience before the Second World War and who was able to resume his work only after the conflict had ended.
