St Edmund’s is delighted that Cardinal Vincent Nichols has publically endorsed the work of the College in the following letter;

The foundation of St Edmund’s College, originally named St Edmund’s House, resulted from a remarkable resurgence of Catholic life in nineteenth-century England. In due course, the College itself became a major contributor to what Cardinal Newman had earlier called Catholicism’s ‘Second Spring’. Since receiving its Royal Charter as a full college of Cambridge University, St Edmund’s remains unique among all the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge in having a Catholic chapel and a Catholic priest as Dean, as well as an interdisciplinary research institute, the Von Hügel Institute, inspired by Catholic thought and culture and dedicated to encounter, dialogue and transformation. Even in the very different climate of the twenty-first century, St Edmund’s continues to make a unique contribution to the life of the University and the world of scholarship in holding together both old wisdom and new learning.

The College richly deserves its reputation, expressed in its motto, after its patron, St Edmund of Abingdon, per revelationem et rationem, ‘through revelation and reason’, for being faith-friendly and open to genuine learning from all sources and disciplines. As Visitor of St Edmund’s College, I am delighted that the College’s Catholic heritage and its humane ideals of education and learning are flourishing.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols

Archbishop of Westminster & Visitor of the College