“My beloved Littlemore”
On 4 November 2025, Sr. Brigitte Maria Hoegemann FSO (1943 – 2025), supported by the prayers of her community, passed away at the Thalbach Convent in Bregenz (Austria). With her death, one of the experts on Newman within the Spiritual Family The Work and a fervent admirer of the famous English Doctor of the Church returned to the Lord.
Sr. Brigitte was born on 10 September 1943 in Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany). She spent her childhood and youth in her hometown. As part of a student exchange programme, she lived for a year in Florida which she always remembered fondly. After graduating from high school, she studied German and English language and literature in Bonn and Freiburg, and later also philosophy. After a semester at Girton College, Cambridge, she followed her philosophy professor to Braunschweig, where she became his research assistant. In 1978, she received her doctorate with a thesis on Kant’s philosophy. During these intense years of study, she acquired a comprehensive education in German and English literature, as well as in philosophy, history and art.
The path to an academic career was open to her. But she followed God’s call, renounced a secular career and joined the Spiritual Family The Work in 1982. After her novitiate, she taught religion at vocational secondary schools in Germany and Austria. In 1985, she was sent to Rome, where she worked as a librarian and tutor at the Pontifical Institute Regina Mundi. Through her collaboration at the International Centre of Newman Friends, she came to know and love the great English saint. Her deep attachment to Newman shaped the rest of her life.
In 1986, Sr. Brigitte moved to Littlemore near Oxford on behalf of The Work to breathe new life into the place of Newman’s conversion (The College) and to establish a local community of The Work. She used her many talents to transform the Oratorian-owned College into a place where interested people could learn more about Newman. Newman’s bedroom and study, the chapel and the library were renovated. Over the years, the individual cottages in The College were furnished so that they are now available to guests for retreats or study days. The large collection of pictures and memorabilia and the special Newman library, which are mainly the result of Sr. Brigitte’s efforts, now give visitors access to Newman’s life and work. Sr. Brigitte guided countless visitors around The College, gave lectures on his life and thought, and maintained contact with many Newman scholars at an international level. For women and men – priests, consecrated persons and lay people – as well as for children, she became a pillar of faith and a spiritual companion. She was very popular among the faithful in Littlemore because of her kindness and friendliness; she helped in many ways in the Catholic parish and maintained good relations with Anglican Christians.
She spent several years teaching in Rome, giving lectures at the Pontifical Urbaniana University on John Henry Newman, focusing in particular on his life and his groundbreaking insights into the relationship between faith and reason. Even after many years, students still talk about Sr. Brigitte’s lectures, which touched their hearts and gave them a genuine understanding of Newman. Cardinal Newman’s motto can also be applied to her work – ‘Cor ad cor loquitur’: Sr. Brigitte spoke with enthusiasm because she was moved by the open Heart of the Lord. She touched the hearts of her students because she approached them as a spiritual mother. She always entrusted her students to the Heart of Jesus and helped them in many ways, including with the writing of their dissertations.
In a storeroom of the Pontificio Collegio Urbano in Rome Sr. Brigitte discovered the altar on which Newman had celebrated his first Mass as a Catholic priest in the original college of Propaganda Fide, not far from Piazza di Spagna. She was able to identify it from photographs. This altar now stands in the Newman Chapel of the Dicastery for Evangelisation of Peoples in the Palazzo di Propaganda Fide, which was opened at the time of the Beatification in 2010.
In 2003, Sr. Brigitte returned from Littlemore to Bregenz, where she took on various tasks in the archives, set up a room with objects of the history of Thalbach Convent and the Dominican sisters who had lived there for over 200 years. She also helped to process the estate of Cardinal Leo Scheffzcyk. Her deep union with Christ was clearly evident also in the midst of her severe dementia that marked the last years of her life. She radiated kindness, love and closeness to God. When two members of the Priests Community of The Work visited her a few months before her death and told her about their stay in Littlemore, she spontaneously said, ‘O my beloved Littlemore!’ May the Lord, her divine bridegroom, complete her and welcome her into his glory, and grant her a place in heaven near the Saint Doctor of the Church, John Henry Newman.
Sr. Mary-Birgit Dechant FSO, Littlemore Fr. Hermann Geissler FSO, Rome