Pope Leo XIV is bestowing one of the Catholic Church’s highest honors on St. John Henry Newman, the deeply influential 19th- century British convert and theologian, declaring him a doctor of the church and holding him up as a model for Catholic educators.
Only 37 other people have been given the title “doctor” in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church. Newman now joins the ranks of such monumental Christian figures as St. Augustine, St. Therese of Lisieux and St. John of the Cross.
The title recognizes that Newman, beloved in both the Anglican and Catholic churches, has universal appeal and made a timeless, eminent contribution to understanding the Christian faith.
A theologian and poet raised in the Church of England, Newman is best known for his writings and sermons on the development of doctrine, truth and the nature of a university. He is admired by conservatives and progressives alike, because he followed his conscience at great personal cost when he decided to convert to Catholicism in 1845.
Leo was formally bestowing the honor on Newman on Saturday during a special Holy Year Mass for Catholic educators and students, during which he was also declaring Newman a co-patron of Catholic education, alongside St. Thomas Aquinas.
It was particularly fitting: It was Leo’s namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who made Newman a Catholic cardinal after his conversion, and it was the earlier Leo who declared Aquinas a doctor of the church and patron of Catholic education.
Leo’s decision to hold out Newman as a model for Catholic educators and students suggests that Catholic teaching will be a priority for him going forward, especially as he emphasizes the ethical use of artificial intelligence for future generations. Earlier this week, Leo penned a new document that cited Newman in his call for Catholic schools to be places for spiritual growth and community, and where the use of technology always keeps human dignity front and center.
The Catholic Church is one of the world’s leading players in education, operating more than 225,000 primary and secondary schools and enrolling some 2.5 million students at Catholic universities around the globe, according to Vatican statistics. Leo was educated by the Augustinians, taught math and physics, and is a member of the Augustinian religious order, which places a special emphasis on St. Augustine’s search for truth and the command “Tolle, lege” (“Take up and read”).
A model for the information age
The Rev. George Bowen, the postulator who oversaw Newman’s canonization and designation as a doctor, said Newman too was confronted with the 19th-century equivalent of the information age, when cheap periodicals were readily available and reading rates shot up. Newman insisted on the need for a wholistic liberal education that included Catholic theology, but also focused on students and teachers interacting in a relational way in the quest for truth and knowledge.
“Suddenly, the world was swimming with information,” Bowen told reporters. “So Newman’s ways of coping with this huge ocean of knowledge and making sense of it, having a connected view, is something very, very relevant today.”
Newman was born in London in 1801 to an Anglican family and was ordained an Anglican priest in 1825, assigned to minister to students at the University of Oxford. There, he and other friends started the Oxford Movement to counter the trend of religious liberalism on English universities, and he became known as the lead proponent of the “High Church” tradition.
When Newman defected from the Church of England to the Catholic Church in 1845, he lost friends, work and even family ties, believing the truth he was searching for could only be found in the Catholic faith.
A unifying figure cherished by Anglicans and Catholics
And yet even today, he remains beloved in the Church of England, such that his hymns were sung last week in the Sistine Chapel when King Charles III prayed alongside Leo in the historic ecumenical service.
Several important Anglican leaders wrote to the Vatican, supporting his designation as a church doctor, and the Anglican archbishop of York was invited to participate in the service Saturday.
“Newman is a big ecumenical figure in the sense that he owes his faith to his upbringing in the Church of England,” Bowen said.
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