Religious Left

UK Gay News LONDON, September 9, 2008 – Justice Secretary, Jack Straw MP, is being urged by Peter Tatchell to rescind the license granted to the Roman Catholic Church for the exhumation and reburial of Cardinal John Henry Newman, on the grounds that it is “certainly unethical and probably illegal”. “It is morally wrong and arguably unlawful for the Ministry of Justice to grant a reburial license that violates Newman’s instructions to his executors and that gives a non-relative third party control over his remains,” Mr. Tatchell said this morning. “The Justice Secretary has caved in to Vatican demands and given the Catholic Church disposal rights over Newman’s body. “It not only plans to move his remains to a church tomb, it also intends to break up his body and distribute his bones as holy relics. full article

By Robert Verkaik, The Independant, UK The Catholic Church is under growing pressure to abandon the "homophobic" exhumation and reburial of the body of one its most famous cardinals, in defiance of his wish to lie for eternity next to the man he loved. Gay rights campaigners have accused the Vatican – which has ordered the disinterment in the first step towards beatification – of attempting to cover up the sexuality of Cardinal John Henry Newman, who died in 1890. Opposition to the reburial among some British Roman Catholics has been bolstered by a new poll organised by The Church Times which shows that a majority of Anglicans are now against the separation of Cardinal Newman, a former Anglican clergyman, and Father Ambrose St John who lived together as "husband and wife" for most of their late adult lives. Yesterday, the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell told The Independent: "The Vatican's decision to move Cardinal Newman's body from its resting pl...