St Gregory the Great

Feast Day – 12th March

Born around AD 540 to an aristocratic family with a tradition of public service, Gregory began a very promising political career as an urban prefect at age 30 only for his father’s death to convince him of the need to reform his life. Renouncing all worldly goals, Gregory sold his possessions and distributed the proceeds to the poor. Enough remained, however, for the construction of seven monasteries, six of which were built on his family’s estates in Sicily and the seventh on the Caelian Hill in Rome where Gregory himself became a monk.

Pope Benedict I soon called Gregory out of his monastic life to serve as a regional deacon in 577 and was sent by Pope Pelagius II in 578 or 579 to the Court of Tiberius II in Constantinople as Papal Ambassador.. In 585 he returned to his beloved monastery and soon was named abbot and ministered amongst the people of Rome.

Seeking to convert the people of Britain, Gregory obtained permission to travel there with some of his monks, but when the Roman people found out they convinced the Pope to have him immediately recalled to the city. When Pope Pelagius died in February 590, Gregory was the unanimous choice of the Roman clergy, senate, and people to become his successor. Like his notable predecessor, Leo I (440-461), he became one of the few early popes named “the Great.”

Pope Gregory habitually referred to himself as the “servant of the servants of God.” As the first monk to become pope, he did much to foster the spread of monasticism. He reorganized the scattered papal estates so that the poor of the city could be fed during the famine that raged when he took office. Most notably for those of us here in England, he sent the prior of his Roman monastery, Augustine, with other monks to convert the Anglo-Saxons.

St John Henry Newman

Feast Day – 9th October

The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham is under the patronage of St John Henry Newman.

John Henry Newman (1801 – 1890) was an English Catholic theologian, academic, philosopher, historian, writer, and poet. He was previously an Anglican priest and after his conversion became a member of the Oratory of St Philip Neri. He was elevated to the rank of cardinal in the consistory of 12 May 1879 by Pope Leo XIII, who assigned him the Deaconry of San Giorgio al Velabro. He was canonised in 2019.

Originally an evangelical academic at the University of Oxford and priest in the Church of England, Newman was drawn to the high church tradition of Anglicanism. He became one of the more notable leaders of the Oxford Movement, an influential and controversial grouping of Anglicans who wished to restore to the Church of England many Catholic beliefs and liturgical rituals from before the English Reformation.

In 1845, Newman resigned his teaching post at Oxford University, and, joined by some of his followers, officially left the Church of England and was received into the Catholic Church. He was quickly ordained as a priest and continued as an influential religious leader, based in Birmingham. In 1879, he was created a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in recognition of his services to the cause of the Catholic Church in England. He was instrumental in the founding of the Catholic University of Ireland in 1854, which later became University College Dublin.

Newman was also a literary figure: his major writings include the Tracts for the Times (1833–1841), his autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864), the Grammar of Assent (1870), and the poem The Dream of Gerontius (1865), which was set to music in 1900 by Edward Elgar. He wrote the popular hymns “Lead, Kindly Light”, “Firmly I believe, and truly”, and “Praise to the Holiest in the Height” (the latter two taken from Gerontius).

Newman’s beatification was proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI on 19 September 2010 during his visit to the United Kingdom. His canonisation was officially approved by Pope Francis on 12 February 2019 and took place on 13 October 2019.

St John Henry Newman was taken as a young boy to Warwick Street by his Evangelical father to hear the music. He wrote: “All I bore away from it was the recollection of a pulpit and a preacher and a boy swinging a censer.” (Apologia Pro Vita Sue). He later wrote: “Were St Athanasius or St Ambrose in London now, they would go to worship not at St Paul’s Cathedral but at Warwick Street.”