1879 - 1890 | ‘Heart speaks unto heart.’
In 1877 Newman returned to his beloved Oxford for the first time in thirty-four years. As an indicator of how much the times had changed, he was there to receive the first honorary fellowship of Trinity College. However, in 1879, he would go on to receive an even greater honour.
After the death of Pope Pius IX in 1878, the papacy of Pope Leo XIII began. Pope Leo admired Newman’s fierce religious orthodoxy and appointed him as a cardinal in 1879. The news that he was to be a Cardinal came as a conclusive vindication of his orthodoxy and loyalty to the Catholic Church. He himself declared ‘the cloud is lifted for ever’. After receiving his cardinal’s hat in Rome, Newman described how, ‘for thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion. Never did Holy Church need champions against it more than now.’ Pope Leo was so fond of Newman and his desire to stay true to the faith that he referred to him as, ‘Il mio cardinale’, meaning ‘my cardinal’.
Newman chose as his cardinal’s motto the words ‘Cor ad cor loquitur’, in English, ‘heart speaks to heart’. When he was made cardinal, Newman specifically requested not to be consecrated as a bishop (since cardinals are typically drawn from the ranks of bishops), and he asked to be allowed to remain in Birmingham. Both requests were granted and he continued to live as a cardinal, still writing, at the Birmingham Oratory.
Newman's elevation to the cardinalate was widely lauded by his fellow countrymen. As an Anglican friend wrote to him, ‘I wonder if you know how much you are loved by England … by all religiously minded in England. And even the enemies of faith are softened by their feeling for you. And I wonder whether this extraordinary and unparalleled love might not be … utilized, as one means to draw together into one fold all Englishmen who believe.’
The year before he died, he would write this about the journey to sainthood. ‘Such are the means which God has provided for the creation of the Saint out of the sinner; He takes him as he is, and uses him against himself: He turns his affections into another channel … it is the very triumph of His grace, that He enters into the heart of man, and persuades it, and prevails with it, while He changes it.’ Purity and Love, pp. 71-72
In his final years, Newman continued to correspond with and give spiritual guidance to many. He died at the age of 89 on the 11th August 1890. Tens of thousands lined the streets of Birmingham for the passing of his funeral cortege. He was buried in the Oratory’s cemetery. An inscription on a plaque in the Oratory reads ‘out of shadows and symbols unto the truth.’ Newman’s journey towards the truth was complete.