Birmingham, England, Sep 8, 2009 / 23:01 pm
An American deacon whose cure from a crippling spine malady has been recognized as a miracle wrought though the intercession of Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman will visit Newman’s Birmingham Oratory in November.
Deacon Jack Sullivan of Massachusetts and his wife Carol will be in Birmingham from November 11 to 12. He will tour Newman’s room and library and the Oratory church, built in the early twentieth century to memorialize the nineteenth century theologian and Catholic convert. The deacon will see the desk at which Cardinal Newman wrote his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, a defense of his 1845 conversion to Catholicism.
The deacon will also visit Newman’s grave at Rednal and parts of Birmingham, such as Digbeth, where the cardinal worked in a poor neighborhood that was part of his first Oratorian parish, the Birmingham Oratory reports.
Deacon Sullivan will later visit Oxford, visiting Newman’s two colleges of Trinity and Oriel, and will also visit Littlemore, where Newman was received into the Catholic Church. The Brompton Oratory in London, which was founded by Father Newman, will be on Deacon Sullivan's itinerary too.