Gerard Tracey

Who is Gerard Tracey?

Gerard David Tracey was archivist at the Birmingham Oratory, and writer, editor and Newman scholar.

An adopted child, he was educated at Handsworth and later attended St Philip's Grammar School, followed by University College, Oxford, where he studied history. In 1976 Newman's Oratorian editor, Fr Stephen Dessain, died and Tracey eventually took over the task of compiling information for the ultimately successful cause of Newman's canonisation.

Tracey died, aged 48, from undisclosed causes, on 20 January 2003. He was interred in the graveyard at the Oratory House, Rednal, outside Birmingham. He was survived by his mother.