POPE DECLARES ENGLISH CARDINAL NEWMAN A SAINT.

Rome, ITALY:
Cardinal John Henry Newman has been declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church at a ceremony in Rome.

The open-air service at the Vatican, celebrated by the Pope, was attended by tens of thousand of pilgrims.

An image of Cardinal Newman at the beatification ceremony.
Image:PA.

Theologian and poet Newman, who died in Birmingham in 1890, is the first English person to be made a saint in almost 50 years.

The Prince of Wales joined the Mass in St Peter's Square, at which four women were also canonised.

Cardinal John Henry Newman will be made a saint by Pope Francis during a ceremony in Rome attended by the Prince of Wales.
Image: Getty.

Mother Mariam Thresia from India, Swiss Marguerite Bays, Mother Giuseppina Vannini from Italy and Brazilian-born Sister Dulce Lopes Pontes were also made saints at the Mass, celebrated by Pope Francis in Italian.

Thousands of Britons travelled to Rome to join the celebration.

Carol Parkinson, the secretary of the Friends of Newman from Birmingham, said it was a special and emotional day.
"His integrity, his friendship, his capacity for friendship and loyalty and hard work set a very good and hopeful example to everyone,"
she added.

The canonisation of the influential 19th century figure has been hailed by Britain's ambassador to the Holy See as an important moment in the UK's relationship with the Vatican.
Image:Getty.

Cardinal Newman was born in London in 1801 and attended Trinity College, Oxford, going on to become an Anglican priest and a leading theologian.

The eldest of six children to a banker father and mother of Huguenot descent, Cardinal Newman was a famous Anglican preacher and prominent intellectual.

The Oxford graduate controversially converted from the Church of England to Catholicism in 1845 and later moved from Oxford to Birmingham where he spent 30 years looking after the poor and the sick.

Cardinal John Henry Newman, the 19th century Anglican cleric scandalised Victorian Britain when he converted to Catholicism, declared a saint in a ceremony led by Pope Francis.

Newman has been credited with two miracles by the Vatican, curing a man's crippling spinal disease and healing a woman's unstoppable bleeding.

The cardinal was beatified in 2010 by Pope Benedict in an open-air Mass in his home city of Birmingham after the first miracle was recognised.

His remains lie in a closed sarcophagus at Birmingham Oratory.

The last English canonisations were in 1970 of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, a group of Catholics who were executed between 1535 and 1679 under laws enacted during the English Reformation.