FLASH REPORT: Pope to beatify Cardinal Newman

From the Mail Online

The Pope is to waive his own rules so he can preside in person over the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman during the papal visit to Britain next year.

In an unprecedented decision, Benedict XVI will take charge of the ceremony which will confer the title 'Blessed' on the Victorian convert from Anglicanism.

The Pope has previously insisted that all beatifications - the last step before sainthood - are carried out by a Vatican official in the diocese in which the candidate died, which in Newman's case is Birmingham.

With one rule already set aside, Vatican officials may now agree to the ceremony being held in London, the city of Newman's birth, rather than Birmingham, say Roman Catholic sources.

This would enable the beatification to take place at Westminster Cathedral - or even before a congregation of 80,000 in Wembley stadium.

Vatican sources say the Pope will preside over the ceremony in September.

The beatification comes as some fear the Church of England is breaking up over the ordination of women bishops and homosexual priests.

And the timing will prompt speculation that it is designed to persuade Anglicans to follow Newman into the Catholic Church.

But Father Ian Ker, a biographer of Newman, said: 'The problems in the Church of England are nothing to do with it.

Many popes have been anxious to canonise Newman. They look to him as a man who welcomed modernisation but in fidelity to Church authority.

'By breaking his own rules Pope Benedict clearly shows he regards Newman as a completely exceptional case, one of the great theologians of the Catholic Church.'

Pope Benedict announced the beatification in July after Vatican theologians ruled the healing in 2001 of Jack Sullivan, an American with a severe spinal condition, was a miracle brought about by praying to Cardinal Newman.

Newman was born in London in 1801 and converted to Catholicism at the age of 44 after leading a movement to try to unite Anglicans with their Catholic roots.

He was made a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in 1879 and died at the age of 89.