Short answers, pulled from the story.
Henry Edward Manning (the 15th of July 1808 - the 14th of January 1892) was an English Catholic prelate who served as the second Archbishop of Westminster from 1865 until his death. He began his career as a Church of England clergyman and archdeacon before converting to Catholicism in 1851, following the Gorham judgement. He was created Cardinal-Priest in 1875.
Manning converted because of the Gorham judgement of 1850, in which the Privy Council ordered the Church of England to ordain a clergyman who denied that baptism had an objective regenerating effect. Manning regarded this as a serious heresy and concluded that a church controlled by a secular civil court could not be a divinely created institution. He was received into the Catholic Church on the 6th of April 1851.
Manning played a significant role in settling the London dock strike of 1889, acting at the behest of social activist Margaret Harkness. His intervention drew on his long engagement with social justice questions and his standing as the leading Catholic churchman in England.
Several scholars consider Manning a key contributor to Rerum novarum, the papal encyclical issued by Pope Leo XIII that established the foundations of modern Catholic social justice teaching. Manning's warm relations with the Holy See and his ultramontane influence gave him direct access to Rome's deliberations on these questions.
Manning published The Eternal Priesthood in 1883, his most influential work. In it he argued that the priesthood was, in and of itself, an outstanding path to perfection and even a state of perfection, and he stressed that a priest must serve his community as more than a dispenser of the sacraments. Compared with his polemical writings, the book's tone was described as austere and glacial.
Manning was a founding member and vice-president of the Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection. At the society's annual meeting in June 1881 he condemned vivisection as inhumane and of doubtful scientific benefit. In 1887 he stated that vivisection was not the way that the maker of all had ordained for the discovery of the healing arts.