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Pope beatifies John Henry Newman

A day after drawing both adoring crowds and the largest protests of his papacy, Pope Benedict XVI wrapped up a historic and contentious four-day visit to Britain on Sunday, moving a Catholic convert one step closer to sainthood and recalling the valor of Britons during the Second World War....

The pope praised Cardinal Newman, a 19th-century thinker and writer who left the Church of England and the pulpit of Oxford University to convert to Catholicism, for “his insights into the relationship between faith and reason, into the vital place of revealed religion in a civilized society, and into the need for a broadly based and wide-ranging approach to education.”

The beatification was sure to raise hackles with some Anglicans, who are already smarting from the Vatican’s announcement last year that it was creating a new structure for traditionalist Anglicans uncomfortable with the church’s ordaining women and openly gay priests to convert to Catholicism.
Read entire article at NYT