VATICAN - Pope defines Cardinal Newman as “a figure of a doctor of the Church for us and for all, and a bridge between Anglicans and Catholics”

Edinburgh (Agenzia Fides) – During his flight to the United Kingdom, for his 17th Apostolic Journey for the Beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, Pope Benedict XVI met with journalists aboard the papal aircraft. Responding to their questions, presented by Fr. Federico Lombardi, Director of the Holy See Press Office, the Pope spoke on the figure of Cardinal Newman with these words:

“On the one hand, Newman is, above all, a modern man who lived the whole problem of modernity, who also lived the problem of agnosticism, the problem of the impossibility of knowing God, of believing. A man who throughout his whole life was on a journey, on a journey to allow himself to be transformed by truth in a search of great sincerity and great willingness to know and to find and to accept the path that gives true life. This interior modernity of his life implies the modernity of his faith. It is not a faith in formulas of past times, but a very personal faith, lived, suffered, found in a long journey of renewal and conversion. He is a man of great learning who, in a sense, participates in our skeptical culture of today, in the question of whether we can be certain in our understanding about the truth of man, and how we can come to convergence in these truths. A man with great learning and knowledge of the Church Fathers, who studied and renewed the origin and the gift of faith, thus recognizing the essentially interior figure. He was a man of great spirituality and of great humanism, a man of prayer, of a profound relationship with God and a deep relationship also with the people of his time. Thus, I would mention these three elements of his life: the modernity of his existence with all the doubts and problems of our existence today; great learning, knowledge of the great treasures of the culture of humanity, and willingness for a permanent search, for permanent renewal; and spirituality, spiritual life with God. These elements give this man an exceptional greatness in our time and because of this he is a figure of a doctor of the Church for us and for all, and a bridge between Anglicans and Catholics.” (SL) (Agenzia Fides 17/09/2010)