John Cornwell (born 1940) is an English journalist and author, and a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. He is best known for various books on the Papacy, most notably Hitler's Pope; investigative journalism; memoir; and the public understanding of science and philosophy. More recently he has been concerned with the relationship between science, ethics and the humanities. His most recent book, Newman's Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint (Continuum, 2010), is a biography of Cardinal John Henry Newman, beatified on 19 September, 2010, during Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United Kingdom.
John Cornwell was born in East Ham, London, the son of Sidney Arthur Cornwell and Kathleen Egan Cornwell.
Raised as a Roman Catholic, Cornwell entered the junior seminary, Cotton College, in 1953 intending to become a priest. He later wrote a memoir on his five years at Cotton. He continued to the senior seminary, Oscott College, Sutton Coldfield, in 1958.
After leaving the seminary, in the 1960s Cornwell studied at Oxford and Cambridge, graduating in 1964 in English Language and Literature. While studying at Christ's College, Cambridge as a post-graduate student, he abandoned Catholicism and became an agnostic. He married a Catholic woman, however, who brought up their children as Catholics, and eventually, twenty years after leaving the Catholic faith, he returned to it.
After leaving Cambridge, Cornwell taught in London schools, and at McMaster University, Ontario. His first two books were novels: The Spoiled Priest, and Seven Other Demons. Two decades later he published a third novel, Strange Gods. In 1973 he published a critical biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge, Poet and Revolutionary, 1772—1804.
His 1989 book A Thief in the Night investigates the 1978 death of Pope John Paul I, which was surrounded by conspiracy theories. Though Cornwell sharply criticized Vatican prelates, he concluded that the Pope was not murdered but died of a pulmonary embolism, possibly brought on by overwork and neglect.
In 1999, Cornwell published Hitler's Pope, in which he accuses Pope Pius XII of assisting in the legitimization of the Nazi regime in Germany through the pursuit of a Reichskonkordat in 1933 and of remaining silent during the Holocaust.
Five years after the publication of Hitler's Pope, Cornwell wrote: "I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler's Pope, that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany."
In his 2009 review of Roman Catholic priest-scholar Kevin P. Spicer's Hitler's Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism, he praises the book's admirable qualities but criticizes the work for its failure to distinguish between the small minority of "brown priests", those priests who unequivocally supported the Nazi regime, with those who whom he considers to be "fellow travelers", i.e. accepting the benefits that came with the Reichskonkordat but who failed to condemn the Nazi regime at the same time. He cites Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) as being an example of a "fellow traveler" who was willing to accept the generosity of Hitler in the educational sphere (more schools, teachers and pupil places), so long as the Church withdrew from the social and political sphere, at the same time as Jews were being dismissed from universities and Jewish pupil places were being reduced. For this he considers Pacelli as effectively being in collusion with the Nazi cause, if not by intent. He further argues that Monsignor Kass, who was involved in negotiations for the Reichskonkordat, and at that time the head of the Roman Catholic Centre Party, persuaded his party members, with the acquiescence of Pacelli, in the summer of 1933 to enable Hitler to acquire dictatorial powers. He argues that the Catholic Centre Party vote was decisive in the adoption of dictatorial powers by Hitler and that the party's subsequent dissolution was at Pacelli's prompting.
In 2004, Cornwell followed up Hitler's Pope with Hitler's Scientists.
In 2004, Cornwell also published A Pontiff in Winter, a work critical of Pope John Paul II. James Carroll in The Washington Post said the book "dissects the record of John Paul II's pontificate with an informed, dispassionate and fully convincing authority". Damian Thompson in The Daily Telegraph wrote that while, up to a point, the "early pages of The Pope in Winter are sympathetic", the book as a whole "is a hatchet job" and its "record of John Paul II's pontificate is often grotesquely biased".
Newman's Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saintmoreless
Published in 2010 by Continuum, this biography of Cardinal John Henry Newman coincided with renewed interest in the 19th century theologian and religious leader as a result of the his beatification during the Papal visit by Pope Benedict XVI to England and Scotland. Philosopher Anthony Kenny in The Times Literary Supplement wrote that "Newman's Unquiet Grave is a substantial achievement...John Cornwell has taken on the task of writing a biography of Newman to make his life intelligible to the largely secular public which in a few weeks will watch on television the ceremony of his beatification. He has followed a via media between the hagiography of Meriol Trevor and the mockery of Lytton Strachey, and he has produced a Life which is readable, sympathetic and judicious... Altogether, he has succeeded in building up a vivid picture of Newman's personality."
Cornwell is also Director of the Science and Human Dimension Project at Jesus College, Cambridge. This is a public understanding of science, medicine and ethics project. In this capacity, since 1990, he has brought together some of the world's leading scientists, philosophers, ethicists, authors and journalists to debate and discuss a range of topics. He criticized "reductionist brain science" for "its failure even to mention, let alone give an account of, human imagination".
In two articles in 2006 and 2007, he criticized Richard Dawkins and his book The God Delusion for its extremist tone as well as for lapses in logic, imagination and understanding. Cornwell followed up these articles with his book Darwin's Angel, published in 2007.
In 2003, he praised Daniel Goldhagen's controversial book, A Moral Reckoning.
In 2009, he was appointed founding Director of the Rustat Conferences, also based at Jesus College, Cambridge. The Rustat Conferences bring together academics with leaders from the frontline of politics, business, the media and education to discuss the vital issues of the day in a roundtable format. The first two meetings in 2009 discussed the global Economic Crisis, and the Future of Democracy. The third Rustat Conferences meeting addressed Infrastructure and the Future of Society - infrastructure for energy security, cities of the future, and water.
