Deborah Gyapong: Why Newman asked to be buried with his friend.

Not by coincidence, I think, no sooner has the Pope left Britain than Fr Dermot Fenlon, one of the “Birmingham Three” Oratorians mysteriously sent into exile, has broken his silence in an article for next month’s Standpoint magazine. It’s about Newman’s burial and, reading between the lines, I’m guessing that a bitter dispute about the mortal remains of Blessed John Henry Newman formed part of this controversy.
Fr Fenlon is disgusted by the myth that Newman wished to be buried next to Fr Ambrose St John because the latter was his “boyfriend”.

Fr. Dermot Fenlon writes:

Before he died, Cardinal Newman left specific instructions. He wished to be buried at Rednal, outside Birmingham, in the ground reserved for the Fathers and Brothers of the Birmingham Oratory. "I wish with all my heart," he wrote on July 23, 1876, "to be buried in Father Ambrose St John's grave — and I give this as my last, imperative will." On February 13, 1881, he added a postscript: "This I confirm and insist on, and command."
Why this imperative? Did Newman have an intimation that his body might at some time be exhumed, in accordance with the practice of the Church for the beatified? Did he fear that his remains might be translated for veneration in the City Church of the Oratorians at Birmingham? Did he wish to circumvent that, per impossibile?
Apparently so. Why?
Newman was in no doubt about the intercession of the saints. His deep sensitivity to the spirit of a place, its genius loci, extended to the cemetery. His studies in the early Church had impressed upon him the centrality of the "holy places", where the saints were buried. Just as the catacombs, outside the city, were the natural gathering place of the faithful for prayer and mutual support, so did they become the supernatural ground of posthumous miracles and healing. The saints' burial places became the focal points of th

e nascent Church. And in the Early Church, the faithful wanted to be "buried near the saints".