Roman Catholic Cardinal. The son of a Waterford merchant, Nicholas Patrick Stephen Wiseman was born in Spain while his father was residing in Seville along with his second wife for business. Sent to Ushaw College, near Durham, in 1810, he moved to the English College in Rome after being reopened in 1818, having been closed for twenty years due to the Napoleonic wars. Earning a doctorate in theology, he was ordained priest there in March 1825. Appointed vice-rector of the English College in 1827 and rector the following year, he held this office until 1840. An antiquity scholar, he devoted much time to the examination of Oriental manuscripts in the Vatican Library. Pope Leo XII appointed him curator of the Arabic manuscripts in the Vatican and professor of Oriental languages in the Roman University. His academic life was however broken by another Papal appointment which asked him to serve as a preacher to English residents of Rome. His lectures soon became popular, with John Henry Newman treating them for the most part with sympathy as a triumph over popular Protestantism. Founding the 'Dublin Review' in 1836, an article of his on the Donatist Schism made a great impression in Oxford, with Newman and others seeing the force of the analogy between Donatists and Anglicans. Named coadjutor of the Apostolic Vicariate of the Central District and president of Oscott College, he received his episcopal consecration with the titular see of Milopotamo on June 8, in the chapel of the English College in Rome. Under his presidency, Oscott became a centre for English Roman Catholics. Named pro-vicar of the London district and successively coadjutor with right of succession, he succeeded to the vicariate on February 18, 1849. With Pope Pius IX's restoration of the see of Westminster, Wiseman became the first cardinal resident in England since Reformation and first archbishop of Westminster upon his appointment on September 29, 1850. Created cardinal the following day with the title of Santa Pudenziana, shorty afther his arrival in England he acted briefly as apostolic administrator of Southwark. With his last two years of life marked by illness, upon his death an extraordinary demonstration of popular respect took place as his body was taken from St. Mary's, Moorfields, to Kensal Green cemetery, where it rested until a more fitting place in the cathedral of Westminster was completed. His body was transferred to the latter on January 30, 1907, being reburied beneath a Gothic altar tomb carrying a recumbent effigy of the archbishop in full pontifical vestments. His 'galeros rubrum', which according to an old tradition once it falls signifies that the Cardinal's soul has finally entered heaven, still hangs above the sarcophagus.