{"id":5858,"date":"2006-01-04T01:03:39","date_gmt":"2006-01-04T01:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/a-married-cardinal.html"},"modified":"2006-01-04T01:03:39","modified_gmt":"2006-01-04T01:03:39","slug":"a-married-cardinal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/a-married-cardinal.html","title":{"rendered":"A married cardinal?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In England, some are hoping for one:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Two former Cabinet ministers are backing the move to give Graham Leonard, who was the Bishop of London, the highest honour the Vatican can bestow. If Pope Benedict XVI backs the idea, it would be the most significant promotion for an Anglican convert since John Henry Newman was made a cardinal in 1879. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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In 2000 Pope John Paul II awarded one of the highest Catholic honours \u2014 the honorific title of the Right Rev Mgr \u2014 to Father Leonard, 84, who led many other priests out of the Anglican fold. In 1995 he had become a Catholic priest after being an Anglican bishop for more than 30 years. <\/p>\n

[snip]<\/em><\/p>\n

There is a precedent for a married Anglican convert becoming a Roman Catholic cardinal. Henry Edward Manning, the other great convert cardinal of the 19th century, was married, but unlike Mgr Leonard he was a widower when he was called to Rome in 1875. He used to keep a photograph of his late wife under his pillow. Thomas Weld became a Catholic priest in 1818, after the death of his wife, and was made a cardinal in 1830. Mgr Leonard\u2019s wife, Priscilla, is still alive. <\/p>\n

The former Tory minister Ann Widdecombe, who is also a convert, has also written to Rome in support of Mgr Leonard. She said: \u201cGraham Leonard as a bishop was the most senior in the 1992 exodus to Rome. He has worked tirelessly to promote understanding of the Catholic Church.\u201d <\/p>\n

Pope Benedict XVI would make the final decision on whether to make Mgr Leonard, whom he knew and admired when Mgr Leonard was Bishop of London, a cardinal. Pope John Paul II took a personal interest in Mgr Leonard\u2019s conversion in 1992. He was received into the Roman Catholic Church by the late Cardinal Basil Hume, leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. When Mgr Leonard became a Catholic priest in 1995, the Pope invited him to Rome for a private audience. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In England, some are hoping for one: Two former Cabinet ministers are backing the move to give Graham Leonard, who was the Bishop of London, the highest honour the Vatican can bestow. If Pope Benedict XVI backs the idea, it would be the most significant promotion for an Anglican convert since John Henry Newman was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nA married cardinal? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/a-married-cardinal.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A married cardinal? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In England, some are hoping for one: Two former Cabinet ministers are backing the move to give Graham Leonard, who was the Bishop of London, the highest honour the Vatican can bestow. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}