Pope recalls Cardinal Newman’s honest pursuit of truth

(November 22, 2010) Pope Benedict on Monday recalled the life and convictions of Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman, saying the British theologian was always honest in his pursuit of the truth. Pope Benedict recalled the cardinal in a message to a 2-day symposium that began in Rome on Monday on the theme “God’s primacy in the life and writings of Blessed John Henry Newman.” The Pontiff who beatified Cardinal Newman on Sept. 19 this year, while on a visit to the United Kingdom, said the symposium “rightly emphasises theo-centricism as a fundamental perspective that was a distinctive trait of the personality and work of the great British theologian.” Speaking about his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism, Pope Benedict noted that the cardinal found comfort ‘in the thought of only two absolute and self-evident beings, myself and my Maker’”. In this he discovered his dependency on his Creator, who is the principle of all things, thus finding in Him the source and the sense of his personal identity and uniqueness. It is this special experience that lays the grounds for God’s primacy in Newman’s life”. The Pope noted that Newman, as an Anglican and as a Catholic, had to go through lots of ordeals, disappointments and misunderstandings”. However, “he was always honest in his pursuit of the truth, faithful to the call of his conscience and intent on the ideal of holiness”.