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These will most likely be bones from his hands which will be shared out between key churches in Britain - as well as one being sent to the Vatican.

LONDON (The Catholic Herald) - Bones are to be removed from the body of Cardinal John Henry Newman so that they can be venerated as holy relics.

The Government has granted a licence permitting undertakers to dig up the body of Cardinal Newman more than a century after his death.

Officials from the Ministry of Justice have also given the go-ahead for Catholic experts in holy objects to fly in from Italy and retrieve "major relics" from the corpse after the coffin is opened for the first time.

These will most likely be bones from his hands which will be shared out between key churches in Britain - as well as one being sent to the Vatican.

They will be placed in shrines so Catholic pilgrims can venerate Cardinal Newman and pray for his intercession when he is made a saint.

A selection of minor relics - small fragments of bone and cloth - will also be collected.

The Coroners Unit insists, however, that all soft tissue is reinterred with the cardinal's body in a tomb in the Birmingham Oratory church later this year.

The licence for exhumation was granted on the 118th anniversary of the cardinal's death in 1890.

It will allow a team from Birmingham-based AB Taylors undertakers to move Cardinal Newman's remains from a small grave in Rednal, near Birmingham, which he shares with his close friend, Fr Ambrose St John, to the oratory in Edgebaston ahead of a likely announcement that he will be beatified.

The undertakers will open the lead-lined coffin at the graveside and Newman's corpse, wearing the vestments of a Catholic priest, will be photographed before it is placed in a new coffin and taken away.

Peter Jennings, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Birmingham, said the condition of the cardinal's body was a mystery but said it could be well-preserved.

"For about 10 minutes or so you will see Cardinal Newman's face as he was when he was buried, if no air has got in," he said.

The body will then be transferred to a morgue where the relics will be removed in strict accordance with health and safety regulations.

Mr Jennings said: "Specialist people from Rome and Milan will be coming out to take relics from his body. A 'major relic' could be the bones from one of his fingers."

Newman's remains will be transferred to a new coffin that will be put on show to the public before it is placed in a marble sarcophagus after a celebratory Mass in the Birmingham Oratory.

Plans for Newman's tomb have already been agreed. It will be engraved with his motto: "Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem" ("from shadows and images into the truth").

The date of the exhumation will be kept secret but will take place before December when Pope Benedict is expected to announce Newman's beatification, the final stage before he is declared a saint.

However, Newman was buried on Monday August 18, 1890 - a week after his death - and Catholic officials may be tempted to dig him up on that anniversary.

The decision by the Government to allow the exhumation brings to an end months of wrangling over a 19th-century law which forbids the transfer of bodies from graves to church tombs.

It also represents a triumph for the Vatican which wanted Newman to be moved into a setting that befits a new status as a saint.

The Pope has been an admirer of Newman, a philosopher and theologian, since 1946 and is especially keen to canonise him.

The application for the exhumation was made in April, at the request of the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood, but Ministers gave it the green light only after a meeting between Church and Government officials in late July.

Sir Suma Chakrabarti, the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Justice, agreed to make a special exception to the law after hearing arguments about the significance of Newman's sainthood for Britain and for the Church.

The licence was confirmed in a letter sent last week by Robert Clifford, head of the burials team of the Coroners Unit of the Ministry of Justice, to Mr Jennings, who led negotiations on behalf of the Archdiocese of Birmingham.

Mr Jennings said yesterday that he was "most grateful" to Sir Suma and his officials for granting the licence in "exceptional circumstances". He added: "The Ministry of Justice has recognised the importance of Newman as a national figure and as a figure of great importance to the country, the Church and to dialogue between faiths."