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Pope Francis has approved a miracle needed to make Cardinal John Henry Newman, an Anglican convert, a saint.

Pope Benedict XVI beatified Newman during a visit to Britain in 2010. The London-born Newman, who died in 1890, was praised by Benedict as a model for ecumenism. Newman renounced his academic career at Oxford University to convert to Catholicism in 1845, convinced that the truth he sought could no longer be found in the Church of England.

The Vatican on Wednesday also said that Francis had approved the "heroic virtues of God's servant" Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty, the Hungarian churchman who suffered a long imprisonment for being a foe of Communism. The recognition of such virtues is a step toward possible sainthood. Mindszenty died in Vienna, Austria, in 1975.