Mystery of cardinal’s ‘lost’ relics in sports hall cupboard Calls for items once belonging to revered Catholic figure who could be canonised to be revealed
ITEMS belonging to a saint-inwaiting – one of Britain’s most important religious figures – are languishing in a Birmingham sports hall cupboard.
The keepsakes of Cardinal John Henry Newman are in a closet at the hall, part of care charity Trident Reach’s Edgbaston headquarters.
They rent Newman House, in the grounds of The Oratory Catholic Church, the cardinal’s former base and setting for a shrine to the great man.
The news adds to the mystery surrounding Birmingham’s most famous religious figure.
Speculation went into overdrive when his grave was opened in 2008 as a prelude to sainthood – only to discover there was no skeleton and precious few remains.
A leading forensic expert has dubbed total decomposition of the 100-year-old corpse improbable.
Despite repeated calls, The Oratory failed to provide details of exactly what lies in the cupboard.
A promised statement failed to arrive, although a spokeswoman admitted the cupboard contains items linked to Britain’s most highprofile convert to Catholicism.
And Trident Reach declined to open the cupboard door, stating that it belonged to The Oratory.
A member of the Oxford-based International Centre of Newman Friends speculated that the mystery items may be the Cardinal’s clothing, moved from his bedroom at The Oratory during refurbishment.
Our source, who claimed to have been told of the store cupboard’s hidden treasure, demanded the items be placed on public display.
“The employee who spoke to me said he’d been told to keep it confidential,” he said.
“But it should not be kept a secret. It is very important to the Catholic people and the church.”
Speculation and rumour have swirled since Cardinal Newman’s 117-year-old grave in Rednal was opened in 2008.
The Oratory’s shrine has a few artefacts on display including a sliver of bone, coils of grey hair and stained linen.
Some of the collection was bought in New York by The Oratory and was first shown eight years ago.
But Trident’s office, in the Oratory’s grounds, is an unlikely location for a pilgrimage.
It is an even stranger spot to find relics of a man poised to be Britain’s first saint in more than 300 years.
He was proclaimed “Venerable” – the first step towards sainthood – in 1991, after being attributed with one ‘miracle’.
Newman is said to have cured Massachusetts deacon Jack Sullivan of a severe back injury.
A second ‘miracle’ is needed before canonisation, and the Vatican is studying the cardinal’s ‘role’ in a teenager’s recovery from head injuries sustained in a car crash.
But creating a saint is a very long process. Cardinal Newman’s began in 1958.
And in his case, it is a holy journey mired by controversy following the discovery of the empty grave.
Church leaders asked for the body to be exhumed as part of the process of proclaiming a new saint.
Organisations present during the painstaking operation included Birmingham Health Authority, the Ministry of Justice, a doctor and a pathologist.
But when the grave was opened, no skeletal remains could be found.
The Church maintains that is “unsurprising”. The soil is damp and acid, with a stream running close by.
And the body was covered with soft mould – as requested by Cardinal Newman – to speed up decomposition.
Reporting on the 1890 funeral, The Birmingham Post stated: “It was covered with mould in studious and affectionate fulfilment of a particular desire of Dr Newman’s. This was to facilitate, rather than impede, the operation of the law: unto dust thou shalt return.”
A spokesman for The Oratory said at the time: “In the view of the medical and health professionals in attendance, burial in a wooden coffin in a very damp site makes this kind of total decomposition of the body unsurprising.”
He was backed by Ian Panter, principal conservator at York Archaeological Trust, who added: “We have got three boxes of textile remains recovered from the coffin and we may actually find remains of the body.
“We’ve got what we think might be a small fragment of bone. We need to carefully unravel the vestments and see what we’ve got. It will be a slow process.” Not all are convinced the body would have completely decayed, however. Professor John Hunter, a leading forensic archaeologist, raised doubts after testing the disturbed soil. He explained that earth would have to be highly acidic, with ground water running through it, for a body to totally decompose in 100 years. “It would be, in my opinion, extremely difficult to explain the absence of skeletal material if this is the same soil as that of Newman’s grave,” Professor Hunter said. “It’s very, very unusual for a body to vanish completely. “The remains were either not being looked for hard enough or, dare I say it, they weren’t there in the first place.” If there are new relics in the cupboard, the discovery will cause a surge of excitement among Newman’s 65 million devotees scattered across the world. America, Canada and Ireland are particular hotbeds of support for his sainthood.