The gay rights activist Peter Tatchell claims the Vatican is promoting “an act of moral vandalism” for requesting the removal of the body of a Victorian British Cardinal from his grave.

The Vatican has asked for the body of John Henry Newman to be transferred from his grave at a cemetery in Rednal, near Birmingham to the Oratory Church in Edgbaston, prior to an expected decision by the Church to declare Newman "blessed", a penultimate step on the path to sainthood, in 2009.

Arguably the most famous convert to Catholicism in Victorian England, Newman was originally an Anglican clergyman who spearheaded the Oxford movement which attempted bring the Church of England back to what he viewed as its Catholic origins. After a prolonged bout of self-questioning, Newman converted to the Catholic Church in 1845. Upon his death in 1890, Newman was buried alongside his close friend, former companion and fellow convert, Father Ambrose St John. Previously, they had shared a house.

Peter Tatchell described the Vatican's order as "an act of religious desecration". He said: "Newman repeatedly made it clear that he wanted to be buried next to his life-long partner, Ambrose St John. No one gave the Pope permission to defy Newman's wishes. The re-burial has only one aim in mind: to cover up Newman's homosexuality and to disavow his love for another man. It is an act of shameless dishonesty and personal betrayal by the gay-hating Catholic Church."

A spokesperson for Catholic Action UK dismissed Mr Tatchell’s claims, saying it was a well-known "trick of homosexual activists" to claim that any close friendship of a person in the past is evidence of homosexuality. "Now Cardinal Newman's great friendship with Ambrose St John is being slyly suggested as evidence of his being subject to a disordered sexuality. The utter absurdity of this idea speaks for itself."

On August 11 this year, on the 118th anniversary of the death of Newman, the Government gave permission for the cardinal’s remains to be transferred from Rednal into a sarcophagus that will stand between marble columns opposite the Holy Souls' Altar in the Oratory Church, in Edgbaston. The Vatican is understood to have made the request so that Roman Catholic pilgrims could come and pray at the tomb of newman: it is not traditional for veneration to occur at shared tombs.

Mr Tatchell said: "There is little doubt that Newman and St John were gay and had a loving, long-term same sex relation ship. It is impossible to know whether this relationship involved sex. It is conceivable that both men had a gay orientation but chose to abstain from sex. Abstinence does not alter a person's sexual orientation."

Peter Jennings, the press secretary to Father Paul Chavasse, provost of the Birmingham Oratory and postulator for the beatification of Cardinal Newman, said: "The bodies do not lie side by side. The coffins are separated by about three feet of earth."