WHITTY, ROBERT. - Jesuit, b. at Pouldarrig on 7 Jan. 1817, d. on 1 Sept. 1895.
A priest in 1840, he was one of the most active and zealous members of the British clergy, so much so that the future Cardinal Wiseman soon wanted him at his side and made him his own vicar general when, with the Catholic hierarchy in England re-established in 1850, he became the first Archbishop of Westminster and primate. Wiseman entrusted to him in large part the drafting of the celebrated pastoral From the Flaminian Gate of 7 Oct. 1850, in which the great event of the rebirth of the Catholic episcopate beyond the Channel was announced to the English people: a pastoral which - as is well known - stirred up stormy reactions among the "anti-papists." W. fearlessly withstood the storm at the side of his cardinal and collaborated effectively with him in organizing the reconstituted Church of England. But seven years later, when the battle appeared by then won, renouncing the episcopal see that the Primate had requested for him from the Holy See, he entered the Society of Jesus at the age of forty. Having completed his novitiate at Verona and made his religious profession, he returned to England to teach canon law at the Jesuit College of St. Beunos in North Wales. Subsequently he was superior of the province of Scotland and finally was called to Rome, to the general Curia, as assistant for England.
Bibliography
Renzo U. Montini