Pope Leo XIV has bestowed one of the Catholic Church’s highest honours on St. John Henry Newman, declaring the influential 19th-century Anglican convert a "doctor" of the church.
The rare designation, announced on Thursday, recognises Newman as a unifying figure across both Anglican and Catholic traditions.
The Vatican confirmed that Pope Leo had approved the recommendation from the Holy See’s saint-making office during an audience with its prefect, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, with the formal declaration expected soon.
This decision marks one of the most significant acts of Leo’s nascent papacy and holds personal resonance for him, given Newman’s profound admiration for St. Augustine of Hippo, the foundational inspiration for Leo’s own Augustinian religious order.
The esteemed title of "Doctor of the Church" is reserved for individuals whose theological writings have profoundly served the universal church.
In the 2,000-year history of the Church, only three dozen figures have been granted this honour, including revered saints such as Augustine, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Teresa of Avila.
Newman’s path to being declared a doctor has been exceptionally quick, after Pope Benedict XVI beatified him during a visit to Britain in 2010. Pope Francis made him a saint in 2019, with then-Prince Charles in attendance.
Newman, a theologian and poet, is admired by Catholics and Anglicans alike because he followed his conscience at great personal cost.
When he 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.
Newman was one of the founders of the so-called Oxford Movement of the 1830s, which sought to revive certain Roman Catholic doctrines in the Church of England by looking back to the traditions of the earliest Christian church.
But he gave up a brilliant academic career at Oxford University and the pulpit of the university church to convert to Catholicism.
As a Catholic, he became one of the most influential theologians of the era, bringing elements of the Anglican church into his new faith tradition. He died in Britain in 1890.
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