The beatification of Cardinal Newman, the most prominent Anglican convert to Catholicism, should offer "a great opportunity ecumenically" and not be presented as "Roman Catholic triumphalism," a leading expert on Newman has said.

Monsignor Roderick Strange, Rector of the Pontifical Beda College in Rome and author of the recently published John Henry Newman: A Mind Alive, said that Newman "while never regretting his move remained positive about what was good in Anglicanism, and appreciative of what he had learnt from it."

Monsignor Strange told the Times he believed that Anglican figures "would be delighted by Newman's beatification, because they have a sense of the way Newman took his Anglican heritage with him into Catholicism".

Addressing an audience at the residence of the British Ambassador to the Holy See, Monsignor Strange said that Anglicans "leaning in a more Protestant direction" were likely to be critical of the beatification if and when it occurred, which was why Rome should "not be triumphalistic about the proceedings."

Monsignor Strange added: "I would see the beatification as a challenge for ecumenism, but also as an opportunity".
Vatican sources say Pope Benedict XVI, who studied Newman's writings as a theological student, is expected to announce the beatification next year, provided the procedures are completed.

This month a casket containing Newman's remains, which include a lock of his hair and a piece of linen thought to be stained with his blood, was placed in the chapel of St Charles Borromeo at the Birmingham Oratory. It will remain there while beatification procedures are finalised in Rome.

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