VATICAN CITY (AP) — Cardinal John Henry Newman, an influential 19th-century Anglican theologian who converted to Roman Catholicism, has moved a step closer to possible sainthood after the pope approved a miracle attributed to his intercession. Pope Benedict XVI ruled on Friday that the recovery of a Boston-area resident who for years suffered from a spinal disorder was miraculous, meaning Newman can now be beatified.

A second miracle is necessary for him to be declared a saint, an event which, if it happens, would make Newman the first English-born saint since the Reformation. Newman, a hero to many Anglicans and Catholics alike, was one of the founders of the so-called Oxford Movement of the 1830s, which sought to revive certain Roman Catholic doctrines in the Church of England by looking back to the traditions of the earliest Christian church. Anglicans split from Rome in 1534 when English King Henry VIII was refused a marriage annulment. “He was extraordinarily important in helping the Anglican church in finding its identity,’’ said Cynthia McFarland, managing editor of the Anglicans Online Web site.

In 1841, Newman published a paper demonstrating that the Thirty-Nine Articles, the doctrinal statements of the Church of England, were consistent with Catholicism. Amid outcry from Anglicans, Newman retired and in 1845 joined the Roman Catholic Church. A year later he was ordained a Catholic priest.

Monsignor Mark Langham, the Vatican official in charge of relations with Anglicans, said Newman was also a “key figure’’ for Catholics. For Catholics, Newman anticipated by some 100 years the ideas about the church’s place in the world that were articulated during the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that brought many liberalizing reforms to the church.

“Because so many of his ideas anticipate Vatican II, he is seen as something of a trailblazer in opening up the Roman Catholic Church to the world and the wider sense of its obligations to other Christians,’’ Langham told The Associated Press.