THE P RTAL
November 2013
a warm October evening and I am hurrying
through the dusk to the church of St Aloysius - the Oxford
Oratory - on the Woodstock Road. I’m late, and the pilgrim group
may already be on its way. At the Oratory House, Fr Daniel gives
calm directions in response to my rather panicky “Have they gone?
Have I missed them?”. “I’ll find them”, he reassures me. “Head past
Trinity; they’ll be on their way to St Mary the Virgin church, by
the Radcliffe Camera.” And so it turns out; there they are in the
High Street, led by a cassocked figure with a megaphone - the
Night Walkers, on their way to Littlemore.
every October 8th
For some years now, the Sisters who look after the
former home of Blessed John Henry Newman at
Littlemore, on the outskirts of Oxford, have organised
this Night Walk every October 8th, to mark the arrival,
by night, of Fr Dominic Barberi on the stage-coach
that October night back in 1845.
Auntie Jo a n
The Night Walk
Oxford on
Page 6
na
wri tes
O x f o r d
Oratory, and
goes through Oxford and out along the road to what
was, back in the 1840s, the impoverished hamlet of
Littlemore. We pray the full 20 decades of the Rosary,
and we stop at places where Newman lived or worked.
This year the accounts of the various events
in Newman’s life associated with each place
were read by Fr Christopher Pearson, of the
Ordinariate. The final part of the Walk takes
the form of a candlelit procession, finishing
with a Holy Hour and Benediction in the
modern church of Blessed Dominic Barberi
that now stands at Littlemore, close to the
church that Newman himself built.
extraordinarily humble
There is a lot about Newman that I did
not know: for example, with his mother
and sisters, he did heroic work during the
cholera epidemic of the 1840s while still
the Anglican vicar of Littlemore. And he
was extraordinarily humble in the way he
approached Fr Dominic: he knelt down,
The Garden at Littlemore
and begged to be received into the Catholic
momentous consequences
Church, and began a full general confession of his
John Henry Newman had resigned his Anglican whole life, which he completed the following morning.
Orders and his prestigious position at Oxford to live
and study at Littlemore, in a set of buildings converted tea and buns in the Library
from some cottages and stables. Here, on that rainy
The Night Walk finishes late: tea and buns in the
autumn night,
Library at Littlemore complete things after the Holy
Hour, and it was only half an hour before midnight
Fr Dominic arrived at his request, and received him when we left.
into the communion of the Catholic Church. It was an
event which was to have momentous consequences The Walk itself is not arduous - perhaps four or
among which we might now include the foundation of five miles at the most - but it is something taken
the Ordinariate and the fact that you are reading this seriously, done in silence interspersed with vocal
edition of The Portal.
prayers. It focuses the mind - and heart - on Newman’s
commitment and on our own call to mission.
a candlelit procession
Recommended.
Joanna Bogle DSG
The annual Night Walk is led by a priest from the