OXFORD - “When we know how many good souls would gladly be Catholics if they could,” the wispy white haired Oratorian priest spoke softly into the microphone, “if we are able to put before them one suggestion or another which may not at the moment convince them, which they may think weak even, but which in God’s mercy may be blest to do them good,” he paused, then almost sang, “we really do a good work.”
Seventy-five pilgrims stood outside the Oxford Oratory, listening. It was a quarter past seven on Sunday 8 October, a strangely balmy night for the start of Michaelmas Term. The priest smiled, folded his booklet, and handed the microphone back to one of the two sisters who stood nearby in elegant black skirts and neon reflective vests. We prayed. Then we set out on the four-mile pilgrimage from Oxford to Littlemore, the place where 178 years ago, St John Henry Newman knelt before a Passionist priest, Bl Dominic Barberi, and asked to be received into the Catholic Church.
