AHC: John Henry Newman becomes Pope

[Justin]

Your mission if you choose to except it is to get a plausible timelime in which John Henry Newman, the famed convert to catholicism from Anglicanism, is elected pope prior to his death in 1890.

Double points if you can get an Newmanite papacy that moves towards the vernarcular masses without a major schism.

 

[Mike Stearns]

Hmmmm.....interesting challenge. Would he actually electable though, given that he originally came from the Anglican tradition?

 

[JedidiahStott]

Yes, he converted. No problem, technically. But breaking the Italian hold on the Curia? Hard, very hard. And no history to fall back on, only ever one English pope, and that half a thousand years go. I can't see it.

And vernacular mass. Even harder. To bring Vatican 2 forward 100 years? It was hard enough OTL, even now it is not entirely accepted, even at the highest (albeit now retired) levels. Hard. Very hard.

Both at once, I think would need space bats.

 

[Kellan Sullivan]

AFAIK the last Englishman to make a try for the papacy was Wolsey - and he had thr English king's backing. Newman would be solely reliant on his fellows in the College of Cardinals.

That said, I did see a timeline somewhere where Newman WAS elected as Pope Gregorius XVII and effected a closer relationship between High Church Anglicans, and the Catholic and Orthodox churches in the 1880s