Thanks to the skill of Father Nicholas Gregoris (translater & editor), the publication in English translation of Giocanni Velocci’s important work, Prayer in Newman, will bring before a wider audience a significant study. In a few pages are drawn together from Newman’s sermons and meditations, both Anglican and Catholic, his reflections on the life of prayer. Moreover, this little work reveals Newman himself to be a masterful teacher of the art of prayer and – most important – to be essentially a man of prayer. In Father Velocci’s admirable phrase, ‘prayer became the preferred occupation of Newman.’
“As the cause for Cardinal Newman’s canonization continues to advance, this timely translation will serve to highlight the central fact that we find in Newman’s inner life that profound longing for union with God in prayer which is surely the hallmark of saints.” – Very Rev. Paul Chavasse of the Birmingham Oratory
The Rev. Giovanni Velocci, a Redemptorist priest, is a professor of Church history and the history of theology, and has published widely on Newman.
The Rev. Nicholas L. Gregoris holds degrees from the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical Theological Faculty of the Marianum in Rome.
John Henry Newman, (1801-1890) was a Roman Catholic priest and cardinal, a convert from Anglicanism in October 1845. In his early life, he was a major figure in the Oxford Movement to bring the Church of England back to its Catholic roots. Eventually his studies in history persuaded him to become a Roman Catholic. Both before and after becoming a Roman Catholic, he wrote influential books, including Via Media, Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1865-66) and the Grammar of Assent (1870). He was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010.
