George Basil Hume OSB OM (2 March 1923 – 17 June 1999) was an English Catholic bishop. He was a monk and priest of the English Benedictine monastery of Ampleforth Abbey and its abbot for 13 years until his appointment as Archbishop of Westminster in 1976. His elevation to cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church followed during the same year. From 1979, Hume served also as president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. He held these appointments until his death from cancer in 1999. His final resting place is at Westminster Cathedral in the Chapel of St Gregory and St Augustine. During his lifetime, Hume received wide respect from the general public which went beyond the Catholic community. Following his death, a statue of him in his monastic habit and wearing his abbatial cross was erected in his home town of Newcastle upon Tyne outside St Mary's Cathedral (opposite Newcastle station); it was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II. Early life and ministry Hume was born George Haliburton Hume at 4 Ellison Place in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1923, to Sir William Errington Hume (1879–1960) and Marie Elizabeth (née Tisseyre) Hume (d. 1979). His father was a Protestant and a cardiac physician from Scotland, and his mother the French Catholic daughter of an army officer. He had three sisters and one brother. Hume was a pupil at the independent school Ampleforth College between the ages of 13 and 18. After finishing his studies there, he entered the novitiate of the Benedictine monastery at Ampleforth Abbey in North Yorkshire in 1941, at the age of 18. He received the habit and the monastic name of Basil. He was solemnly professed in 1945. After Ampleforth, Hume went on to study at St Benet's Hall, Oxford, a Benedictine institution, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in modern history. As it was impossible to study Catholic theology at Oxford at the time, he went on to the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, to complete his theological studies, earning a Licence in Sacred Theology. Hume was ordained a priest on 23 July 1950. He then returned to Ampleforth to teach religious education, history, French and German. He served as head of the school's Department of Modern Languages before becoming the abbot of Ampleforth in 1963. Hume was a lifelong fan of jogging, squash and Newcastle United F.C. He once described getting an