October 9 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

Newman at Littlemore, October 1845 · Part 2 · LITTLEMORE, near Oxford, October 9, 1845 AD

St. John Henry Newman kneels before a rain-soaked friar to become Catholic

Having resigned his Oxford fellowship, the Anglican clergyman is received at Littlemore by Blessed Dominic Barberi, an Italian priest who learned why he had been invited only when he arrived.

An engraved portrait of a young clergyman with wavy hair and round spectacles, seated in a chair before a carved Gothic bookcase, wearing a dark coat and waistcoat over a high white collar and cravat. — St. John Henry Newman, in a reproduction of an 1847 AD portrait miniature by Sir William Charles Ross.

Saint John Henry Newman, a clergyman of the Church of England for more than twenty years, was received into the Catholic Church at Littlemore, near Oxford, on October 9, 1845 AD. Two of the young men who lived with him were received with him. The night before, St. John Henry Newman knelt at the feet of Blessed Dominic Barberi, an Italian priest who was drying his clothes by the fire after five hours on a coach in the rain, and confessed the sins of his whole life.

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A black-and-white photograph of a young man in a dark coat seated in an armchair beside a writing table, reading from an open book, with lace curtains and a stove behind him.

event · LOS GATOS, California, October 9, 1914 AD

Miguel Pro reaches California exile a week after last seeing his mother

Fourteen young Mexican Jesuits reached the Jesuit house at Los Gatos, California, after revolutionary soldiers raided their novitiate and their superiors sent them out of the country. Among them was Miguel Pro, 23, whom the Church beatified in 1988 AD. A week earlier he had embraced his mother on the platform at Guadalajara, and he never saw her again.

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More in this edition

A sepia pen-and-wash drawing of a small stone chapel with an open arched door in a grove of tall autumn oaks, a dirt path leading to it through grass and flowers, rows of small headstones and crosses on either side, a white two-storey house with a porch behind the trees at right, and a wooded ridge under a hazy evening sky. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of a nineteenth-century reportage drawing in pen, ink and sepia wash. No person appears in it.

place · EMMITSBURG, Maryland, October 9, 1877 AD

Archbishop of Baltimore is buried in his aunt St. Elizabeth Ann Seton's vault

A special train brought the body of Archbishop James Roosevelt Bayley of Baltimore, who died at Newark on October 3, to St. Joseph's in the valley below Emmitsburg, Maryland. Bishops, priests and members of the religious orders walked his coffin to the Sisters' graveyard and laid him in the vault of his aunt, Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, as he had asked.

3 min read

An illuminated manuscript miniature of Pope St. Gregory the Great in a red cope, hands raised, leading a procession of cardinals and clergy through the streets of Rome beneath towers, while St. Michael the Archangel stands atop a tower sheathing a sword.

column · ROME, 596 AD

Pope St. Gregory refuses to let frightened monks abandon the journey to England

Pope Saint Gregory the Great sent about forty monks from his own monastery in Rome to preach to the English this year. In southern Gaul they lost their nerve and sent their leader, Saint Augustine of Canterbury, back to ask that they be excused. On July 23 St. Gregory wrote ordering them to go on and made St. Augustine their abbot.

4 min read

A sepia-toned archival photograph of St. John Bosco standing among dozens of boys outside a building, many holding brass instruments and drums.

profile · TURIN, 1885 AD

The future Don Bosco beats a showman four times, then returns his money

As a schoolboy at Chieri, the future St. John Bosco beat a professional showman at running, jumping, balancing and climbing, on stakes his friends lent him. Feeling sorry for the man, the students gave back almost all he had lost in return for a dinner at the Muretto inn. Don Bosco, who now runs a house for homeless boys in Turin, wrote the story down at the order of Pope Pius IX.

4 min read

Today in the Church

Friday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

Saint Denis, bishop, and companions, martyrsOptional Memorial
Saint John Leonardi, priestOptional Memorial

Saint of the day

Saint John Henry Newman

Saint John Henry Newman (1801–1890 AD) was an Anglican clergyman at Oxford and a leader of the Oxford Movement. Received into the Catholic Church in 1845 AD, he founded the Oratory in England, became a cardinal and is honoured as a Doctor of the Church.

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On this day in the Church

1547 An Achenese fleet entered the port of Malacca at about two in the morning and attacked the city walls, with St. Francis Xavier inside the city, and was driven off.Source
1894 The Pavillon, the small property at Alençon that St. Louis Martin had bought in 1857 AD, was sold ten weeks after his death.Source

Quote of the day

“On the one hand I came gradually to see that the Anglican Church was formally in the wrong, on the other that the Church of Rome was formally in the right; then, that no valid reasons could be assigned for continuing in the Anglican, and again that no valid objections could be taken to joining the Roman.”

— St. John Henry Newman, on the years before his reception, Apologia pro Vita Sua, Chapter IV