THE Catholic Church is about to dig up a body. Not any old cadaver, of course, but one of great symbolic value to this grisly religion: the corpse of The Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman, who was buried in a small cemetery in August 1890. Yes, after he died, in case you were wondering.

Rome – which has a worrying obsession with dead bodies, as distinct from live boys – now wants his remains to be moved to a marble sarcophagus in the Birmingham Oratory. However the Vatican has forbidden the announcement of the removal of the corpse until after the process has been completed.

But what the Church intends doing with the remains of Newman’s BOYFRIEND, buried in the same grave, remains a mystery

After we posted this story, Anthony Bucci (see comments) alerted us to the possibility of the cardinal being one of those!

We went hurrying to the site he suggested, as well as to Wikipedia, which reveals that Newman:

Shares a grave with his lifelong friend, Ambrose St John, who had converted to Roman Catholicism at the same time as Newman. The pall over the coffin bore his cardinal’s motto Cor ad cor loquitur (”Heart speaks to heart”). Inseparable in death as in life, the two men have a joint memorial stone that is inscribed with the words he had chosen: Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem (”Out of shadows and phantasms into the truth”)

So it looks like Newman not only looked like Wilfred Bramble, but, like Bramble, was gay too.

Commenting on the story in the Times, an American reader, Donald Lowery, said:

Cardinal Newman was buried beside his gay lover at his own request. Are they going to disinter Ambrose St. John and keep the happy couple together? Perhaps the Roman Church is going to loosen up its opposition to gay unions? The pair would make lovely patrons for closeted Gay Roman Catholics.

According to the Telegraph, the move is expected to take place by the end of the year, and would enable people to pay tribute to him more easily, and is also part of the process of creating a saint.

Yeah, like the Vatican needs another damn saint - they keep accumulating the bloody things like kids once collected Pokemon cards

The procedure has to be approved by Birmingham City Council and the Ministry of Justice, which was accused of “procrastinating” over the issue, but is expected to be rubber stamped in the next few weeks.

Catholics hope that Pope Ratzinger will issue a decree declaring Cardinal Newman as Blessed in December. This would pave the way for beatification next spring. The final step would be for the Cardinal to be canonised as a saint.

Said Father Paul Chavasse, Provost of the Birmingham Oratory:

One of the centuries-old procedures surrounding the creating of new saints by the Catholic Church concerns their earthly remains. These have to be identified, preserved and, if necessary, placed in a new setting which befits the individual’s new status in the Church. This is what we have been asked to do by the Vatican with regard to Cardinal Newman’s remains, which have lain at Rednal since his death in 1890.

We hope that Cardinal Newman’s new resting place in the Oratory Church in Birmingham will enable more people to come and pay their respects to him, and perhaps light a candle there. Many will surely wish to honour this great and holy man.

Cardinal Newman – an Anglican-turned-Catholic – died in Edgbaston, on Monday 11 August 1890, aged 89