It has now been officially announced that our Holy Father will personally beatify Cardinal Newman during his visit to England in September. Great!
The downside is it will take place in the derilict concrete sprawl of Coventry Airport, familiar to those present at the JPII Mass in 1982! I find this a bit disappointing from a liturgical and aesthetic point of view, and the likely implication that the English Oratories are probably being sidelined. However, here is the official statement:
The Fathers and many friends of the English Oratories are delighted by the official announcement that our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI will beatify our founder, the Venerable John Henry Newman, in the Archdiocese of Birmingham during his visit to Britain in September. Newman made his home in the Archdiocese for all his adult life, first in Oxford, where he lived as an Anglican and was received into the Catholic Church, and later in Birmingham itself where he founded and worked in the Birmingham Oratory for over forty years.
The Holy Father’s life-long devotion to Newman has made a profound contribution to understanding the depth and significance of our founder’s legacy. His decision to beatify Newman in person confers a unique blessing upon the English Oratories and all who have drawn inspiration from Newman’s life and work.
We joyfully look forward to welcoming the Holy Father, as well as the many pilgrims and visitors who will come to the Beatification ceremony and visit Newman’s shrine at the Birmingham Oratory.
We also look forward to the challenging work of preparing for the Beatification in conjunction with Church and civil authorities. We pray that the Beatification will fittingly reflect both Newman’s significance for the Universal Church and the honour paid to our Archdiocese and our country by the Holy Father’s presence among us.
Very Rev. Richard Duffield
Provost of the Birmingham Oratory
and Actor of the Cause of John Henry Newman
I was present at Pope John Paul II's mass at Coventry airport on WhitSunday 1982. Given that the airport doesn't seem to be doing very well these days perhaps following Cardinal Newman's beatification it could be re-designated -following some architectural modifications- as a basilica!
ReplyDeleteI entirely agree that the choice of Coventry airport is dismal for Cardinal Newman's beatification. Apparently the football grounds of Birmingham were already engaged. But no setting could be more inimical to the character of Newman as a man and beatus. The problem is that there are no buildings in Britain big enough to accommodate the numbers expected to attend. It should take place in Rome.
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