Ambrose St John

Ambrose St. John
Reverend Father Ambrose St. John
Born	June 29, 1815 Hornsey, London, United Kingdom
Died	May 24, 1875 Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom
Resting place	Rednal Roman Catholic Cemetery, Rednal, Metropolitan Borough of Birmingham, West Midlands, United Kingdom
Education	Westminster School, Christ Church, Oxford

Ambrose St. John (1815 – 24 May 1875) was an English Oratorian and convert to Catholicism. He is best known as a lifelong friend of Cardinal John Henry Newman.

St. John was born and brought up in Hornsey, Middlesex (present-day Hornsey, North London). He was the son of Henry St. John, descended from the Barons St. John of Bletso, and the grandson of Andrew St John, Dean of Worcester. He was educated at Westminster School, and Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated M.A., forming a lifelong friendship with Newman.

In 1841 he became curate to Henry Wilberforce, first at Walmer, subsequently at East Farleigh. He then joined Newman at thechapel of Littlemore which he left, on his conversion to the Roman Catholic Church, about a month before Newman's own conversion in October 1845. After a short time spent with Newman at Maryvale he accompanied him to Rome where they were ordained as priests. Having become Oratorians, they began mission work in Birmingham (1847), removing to the suburb of Edgbaston in 1852. There he devoted himself entirely to missionary work, taking a leading part in the work of the Birmingham Oratory and its school. He was a classical scholar and a linguist both in Oriental and European tongues.

St. John's death, at Edgbaston, Birmingham, followed his work in translating Josef Fessler's book on papal infallibility, published as The True and False Infallibility of the Popes in London in 1875, a defence of the doctrine of Infallibility as taught by the Italian "Ultramontane" theologians, at a time when the controversy over the doctrine was mounting and Newman was engaged in controversy with William Ewart Gladstone. Newman, who with others had been privately opposed to a dogmatic declaration of the doctrine, which Gladstone had vigorously attacked, reproached himself that he had caused his friend's death by overworking him.