WHITTY, ROBERT. - Jesuit, b. at Poulardrig on 7 Jan. 1817, d. on 1 Sept. 1895.
Ordained 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 took him as his aide and appointed him his vicar general when, with the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850, Wiseman became the first Archbishop of Westminster and Primate. Wiseman entrusted him with drafting the celebrated pastoral *From the Flaminian Gate* of 7 Oct. 1850, in which the great event of the rebirth of the Catholic episcopate across the Channel was announced to the English people: a pastoral letter which, as is well known, provoked stormy reactions among anti-papalists. Whitty fearlessly supported his cardinal through the tempest and effectively collaborated with him in organizing the reconstituted Church in England. But seven years later, when the battle seemed already won, renouncing the episcopal see that the Primate had sought for him from the Holy See, he entered the Society of Jesus at the age of forty. After completing his novitiate in Verona and making his religious profession, he returned to England to teach canon law at the Jesuit College of St. Beunos in North Wales. Subsequently, he served as provincial superior of the Scottish province and finally was called to Rome, to the General Curia, as Assistant for England.