ACI Prensa Staff, Oct 31, 2025 / 07:00 am
Pope Leo XIV declared St. John Henry Newman, along with St. Thomas Aquinas, as a patron saint of the Catholic Church’s educational mission in his recent apostolic letter on education, “Drawing New Maps of Hope.”
In the letter, the pontiff draws a connection between the two saints, separated by six centuries but united by the same mission: teaching within the Catholic Church.
Paul Gordon, professor of Catholic social doctrine and contemporary history and literature at the Ángel Ayala Institute of Humanities, reflected on the Holy Father’s letter in a recent conversation with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner.
Union between faith and reason
As the Scottish professor noted, both Newman and Aquinas were theologians who promoted dialogue between the sciences, especially between faith and reason, positioning the gift of faith as a guide in the search for truth.
In the apostolic letter, published on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Gravissimum Educationis, the pope recalls the words of Newman, who will also be declared a doctor of the Church on Nov. 1: “Religious truth is not only a part, but a condition of general knowledge.”
According to Pope Leo, this involves an invitation to “renew the commitment to knowledge that is as intellectually responsible and rigorous as it is profoundly human.”
A keen insight into modern times
Aquinas, known as the “angelic doctor,” plumbed the depths of the Christian faith “in the light of Aristotle’s philosophy” and Christianized the ideas of the Greek philosopher, Gordon explained.
“St. Thomas Aquinas introduced Aristotle’s philosophy into the Catholic Church at the beginning of the modern world, in the 13th century,” he added.
For his part, Newman, who was the first rector of the Catholic University of Ireland, “unified faith and reason” with his keen insight into modern times.
Gordon also noted that Newman is one of the most celebrated converts to Catholicism in recent times, making the pope’s gesture “another milestone marking the return to Rome” that Newman himself experienced.
Though criticized by many at the time, Newman “was among the first” who ”dared to leave Anglicanism, which is still the official and established Church” in Great Britain, and go “over to the Catholic Church because he knew that’s where the truth resided,” Gordon said.
Newman’s conversion paved “the way for many other converts in my country and in English-speaking countries.”
Gordon said he thinks Pope Leo XIV intends to emphasize the importance of ecumenism in light of Newman’s courageous and brave example: “He shows us that we must pray for the unity of the body of Christ, because division is a sin.”
A light for teaching today
Both saints can serve as a light for the teaching profession in today’s world, Gordon emphasized, where “education, especially at the university level, has become a kind of utilitarian vocational training where spirituality has no place.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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Glad to see Thomas Aquinas elevated once again by Leo XIV, as under Pope Leo XIII; AND Cardinal Newman whose “Development of Christian Doctrine” is the litmus test for any novel attitudes possibly cobbled into the otherwise credible propositions from the dozen or so post-Synodal (and “expert”!) Study Group reports rescheduled for rollout in December. Building on the 5th-century Vincent of Lerins, the 19th-century Cardinal Newman (the “Father of the Second Vatican Council”) elaborated:
“I venture to set down seven notes of varying cogency, independence, and applicability to discriminate [!] healthy developments of an idea from its state of corruption and decay, as follows: There is no corruption IF IT RETAINS”:
(1) One and the same TYPE [doctrine/natural law v. a disconnected category of pastoral “accommodation”?],
(2) The same PRINCIPLES [sound philosophy v. ambulatory Hegelianism?],
(3) The same ORGANIZATION [the universal Barque of Peter v. a possibly divisive confederation of synodal localisms?];
(4) If its beginnings ANTICIPATE its subsequent phases [the Catechism v. homosexual lifestyle mainstreaming?];
(5) Its later phenomena PROTECT and subserve its earlier [guardianship of revealed truth, and the inseparable and inborn natural law and moral absolutes as in Veritatis Splendor v. gradualism into zeitgeist doublespeak as in Fiducia Supplicans?];
(6) If it has a power of assimilation and REVIVAL [New Evangelization in new times v. regression into Amazonia/Germania/Islamic cosmopolitanism?], and
(7) A vigorous ACTION from first to last…” [“backwardist!” steadfastness v. constant change as the deepest rut of all?].
So much for discriminating clarity v. any indiscriminate inclusiveness…