Top photo caption: Pope Leo XIV poses as he meets with a delegation from Oxford University during a private audience at the Vatican Sept. 4, 2026. Pope Leo urged academics from Oxford to “seek the truth courageously” in the footsteps of St. John Henry Newman. OSV News photo/courtesy Mario Tomassetti, Vatican Media
By Courtney Mares, OSV News
ROME OSV News — Pope Leo XIV urged academics from Oxford University to “seek the truth courageously” in the footsteps of St. John Henry Newman in a Sept. 4 audience at the Vatican.
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 is 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 commented that the college’s anniversary is “an opportunity to celebrate its Catholic origins as the ‘College of the Blessed Virgin Mary.'”
The Pope pointed to Newman, whom he named a doctor of the Church and co-patron of the Church’s education last fall, as a model of faith and scholarship.
“Saint 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.
Newman’s book “The Idea of a University” is considered a classic work on the importance of a liberal arts education.
Pope Leo emphasized 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.”
St. John Henry Newman 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.” He was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1847.
The 19th-century Oxford theologian who is the first English saint of the modern era showed “great trust that God would guide him despite the uncertainties of life,” exemplified in his famous hymn “Lead, Kindly Light,” the Pope said, as he encouraged Oxford’s current scholars to “seek the truth courageously” in their own academic endeavors.
“I urge you, then, to entrust yourselves and the future of the College to the unfading Light of the world, so that you too, like Our Lady, may reflect his glory to the world,” Pope Leo said.
The Oxford delegation’s papal audience at the Vatican comes weeks after King Charles III visited Oriel College, including a stop at the oratory that Newman used for private prayer.
During the meeting, Lord Neil Mendoza, the provost of the college, presented a gift to Pope Leo of an original 17th-century engraving of Oriel College from the first illustrated book of Oxford, published in 1675.
“We are deeply grateful to Pope Leo for receiving our delegation today and recognizing our former Fellow Saint John Henry Newman as a Doctor of the Church,” Mendoza said.
“I welcome His Holiness’s insistence in his recent encyclical that artificial intelligence should be neither idolised nor feared, but governed towards human dignity, the common good, solidarity and justice.”
Courtney Mares is Vatican editor for OSV News. Follow her on X @catholicourtney.
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