On the day of John Henry Newman’s funeral on August 19, 1890, more than 15,000 people took to the streets of Birmingham to pay homage to him. Generations have spoken of him as a saint ever since.
Among those who saw the holiness of this man was RH Hutton, the editor of the Spectator, who wrote in an obituary that Newman’s passing was like “a white star, extinguished, of a sign vanished, of an age impoverished, of a grace withdrawn”.
Such respect has barely ebbed over the years and the day upon which the Victorian cardinal’s sanctity was finally recognised by the Catholic Church came on Sunday, a gloriously sunlit October morning in Rome.
