Newman’s own place within the Catholic Revival is paramount. He is indeed the very Father of the Revival itself.

Blessed John Henry Newman: Our Guide and Inspiration

by Joseph Pearce

In 2010, I was honored to be among the official press commentators for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain. 

It was indeed a joy and a privilege to follow the Pope as he visited venues in London that resonated with Catholic significance. 

He visited Westminster Hall, in which St. Thomas More had stood trial, and visited Westminster Abbey to pray at the shrine of St. Edward the Confessor. He blessed the crowds in Hyde Park, only a stone’s throw from the site of Tyburn Tree, the Machiavellian altar on which numerous Catholic martyrs were slain. 

It was as though the places selected for the Pope’s visit had been carefully chosen to remind Englishmen of their Catholic heritage and to warn of the dangers inherent in secularist intolerance toward the Church. 

The purpose of the Pope’s visit, however, was not primarily to celebrate England’s Catholic heritage but to beatify John Henry Newman.

In so doing, the Pope was not so much celebrating history as making it. 

Newman was the first Englishman, other than the martyrs, to be beatified since the Reformation; he was also the first Englishman born since the seventeenth century to be raised to the altar.

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