Pope Leo XIV has urged academics from Oxford University to “seek the truth courageously” in the footsteps of St John Henry Newman. Source: OSV News.
On Friday, the Pope received a delegation from Oxford’s Oriel College, where St John Henry Newman served as a fellow from 1822 to 1845.
The college was in Rome as part of commemoration of the 700th anniversary of receiving its royal charter in 1326 from King Edward II under the name House of the Blessed Mary at Oxford.
Pope Leo said the college’s anniversary was “an opportunity to celebrate its Catholic origins as the ‘College of the Blessed Virgin Mary’”.
The Pope pointed to the saint, who this year he named a doctor of the Church and co-patron of the Church’s education, as a model of faith and scholarship.
“St John Henry Newman stands as a shining example of a scholar who not only showed the inseparability of faith and reason in his works but even more admirably in his life,” Pope Leo said.
St John Henry Newman’s book, The Idea of a University, is considered a classic work on the importance of a liberal arts education.
Pope Leo emphasised how Newman’s thought on education is particularly relevant in the context of today’s challenges because the saint “proposes a Christian formation that embraces the entire person and measures the value of education according to human dignity, justice and the capacity to serve the common good.”
He resigned his fellowship at Oriel College in 1845, the same year that he was received into communion with the Catholic Church. He lost many friends and was rejected by his family because of his conversion, but wrote that he experienced a deep interior peace, “like coming into port after a rough sea”.
St John Henry Newman, who lived from 1801 until 1890, was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1847.
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Pope Leo urges Oxford College to seek the truth courageously like St John Henry Newman (By Courtney Mares, OSV News)
