He was a leading figure in the Oxford Movement, a group of people who in the 1830s attempted to reform the Church of England by restoring the high-church traditions, and became a prominent convert (1845) to Roman Catholicism. The publication in 1841 of Tract 90, which argued that the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England could be reconciled with Roman Catholic doctrine, caused a major scandal. In 1846 he went to Rome, where he was ordained priest. A gifted writer, he published Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864), a justification of his spiritual evolution, and was created cardinal in 1879. He was beatified in 2010 and canonized in 2019.