John Henry Newman's body missing

Nothing was found of John Henry Newman's body when his grave was opened last Thursday.
"Brass, wooden and cloth artefacts from Cardinal Newman's coffin were found," said a spokesman for the Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory. "However there were no remains of the body of John Henry Newman."
This is not a case of body-snatching but of natural decomposition. "Burial in a wooden coffin in a very damp site makes this kind of total decomposition of the body unsurprising," said the experts at the site.
But it had been planned to rebury the saintly Cardinal's remains in the Birmingham Oratory church. He is to be declared "Blessed" soon as a step to canonisation as a saint.
Now a separate relic of a lock of hair, and the secondary relics of remains of clothing will be interred there. Since Newman was buried in the same grave as Ambrose St John, no doubt remains of Fr St John's bodily remains will have the honour of beings transferred to Neman's sarcophagus too.
I can't help thinking this is of a piece with Newman's attitude to miraculous relics. "Though one relic be sometimes mistaken for another, and St Theodore stands for St Eugenius or St Agathocles, still, once take into account our First Principle, that God is likely to continue miracles among us," Newman wrote, "I do not see why He should feel much displeasure with us on account of this, or should cease to work wonders in our behalf."
Newman chose to have on his tomb the motto: "Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem" - from shadows and appearances into the truth.
He quite rightly related all honouring of relics to the supreme mystery of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Only because Christ rose again do Christians place hope in the bodily resurrection of the dead. Just as the early Christians did not suppose that, though the bodies of martyrs be burned to ashes or lost in the sea, they would not share in Christ's resurrection, so Newman's disappearance into the shadows of earth will not dampen the confidence of those who seek his intercession in heaven.