England: 175 Years Ago

One hundred and seventy-five years ago, on the Feast of St Michael, Pope Pius IX restored the Catholic hierarchy in England under the leadership of Cardinal Nicholas Patrick Wiseman.

The Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, condemned the Pope’s decision as ‘insolent, insidious, and inconsistent with the Queen’s supremacy’.

The response of the so-called Catholic nobility of England was no better.

The Duke of Norfolk received Anglican communion. Lord Beaumont publicly renounced his Catholicism and condemned the Pope, and even Lord Camoys, the scion of the Stonor family, thought that the restoration of the hierarchy was ‘inopportune’ and made him distinctly uncomfortable.

'The past has returned; the dead live again. The English Church was, the English Church was not, and now the English Church is once again. This is a portent worthy of a cry. It is the coming of a Second Spring.'

— St. John Henry Newman, from 'Catholic Emancipation', 1829–1929.

However, it wasn't until 1908 that Pius X, with his apostolic constitution Sapienti Consilio, removed England and Wales from the jurisdiction of Propaganda Fidei. This ended the designation of 'mission territory' and placed the hierarchy of England and Wales on an equal footing with other European hierarchies.

What a journey for this isle of saints! Cardinal Wiseman wrote a prayer for the conversion of England.