John Morris (Jesuit)

John Morris, SJ (4 July 1826 – 22 October 1893), was an English Jesuit priest and scholar of Church history.

Morris was born in Ootacamund, Tamil Nadu, then under the British Raj. He was a son of John Carnac Morris, FRS, an official of the East India Company who was also a noted scholar of Telugu, and of his wife, Rosanna Curtis. He was educated partly in India, partly at Harrow School, partly in reading for Cambridge with Dean Alford, the New Testament scholar. Under him a great change passed over Morris's ideas. Giving up the thought of taking the law as his profession, he became enthusiastic for ecclesiastical antiquities, took a deep interest in the Tractarian movement, and resolved to become an Anglican clergyman.

Going up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1845, Morris became the friend, and then the pupil of F. A. Paley, grandson of the well-known divine, and already one of the leading Greek scholars of the university. The conversion to Catholicism of John Henry Newman, followed by many others, impressed him, and he was converted by Bishop Wareing, 20 May 1846.

A storm followed, beginning in The Times, which made itself felt even in Parliament. Paley had to leave Cambridge (which led to his subsequently joining the Catholic Church), while Morris was practically cast off by his family. He then went to the English College, Rome, under Dr. Thomas Grant, and was there during the Revolutions of 1848. He was ordained a Catholic priest the following year, and returned to England.

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