St John Henry Newman was proclaimed a co-patron of the Church’s educational mission along with St Thomas Aquinas by Pope Leo XIV today, Monday 28 October, in his apostolic letter Drawing New Maps of Hope. 

In four days’ time Pope Leo will proclaim Newman a Doctor of the Church during a pontifical Mass in St Peter’s Square to mark the Jubilee for the World of Education.

Newman’s fame in education is almost entirely due to his celebrated text The Idea of a University, where he champions the ideal of a liberal education – that knowledge is its own end and worth pursuing for its own sake. But his contribution to education is far greater than a book. He was immersed in education all his life. He played a leading part in the reform of Oxford University, acted as the founding president of the Catholic University in Dublin, and co-founded in Edgbaston the Oratory School (which moved to Reading in 1922). 

Rather than view education merely as the imparting of knowledge, Newman saw it as the training of the mind, the acquisition of habits, and the formation of character. He held that the purpose of education is ‘to fit men for this world while it trained them for another’. The two ends are intertwined, separate but interrelated and not just superimposed. 

Education is not about systems or knowledge, but individuals. It is something deeply relational. For Newman, ‘An academical system without the personal influence of teachers upon pupils, is an arctic winter’. Personal influence is what gives any system its dynamism: the action of mind on mind, heart on heart. 

For St John Henry, the education of the young is undertaken not only for their ‘spiritual welfare’, but ‘with the object of training them to fill their respective posts in life better, and of making them more intelligent, capable, active members of society’.

Famously, Newman appealed for ‘a laity, […] who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it’.

His insistence on students gaining a ‘connected view’ of knowledge is vital in the age of the internet, in order to withstand the fragmentation not just of knowledge, but the whole of human life. He anticipated the ‘cult of the celebrity’ – what he called ‘newspaper fame’ – and the need to train students to navigate the world of ideas. 

Newman sought to nurture the imagination of young minds in such a way as to open them to paradox, the transcendent, mystery and a sacramental world view. 

St John Henry Newman is a Christian humanist of the highest order. As a seminal thinker and innovative practitioner, his ideas on education have inspired countless individuals and institutions. He shows us that, while ‘The world is content with setting right the surface of things; the Church aims at regenerating the very depths of the heart.’

St John Henry Newman, intercede for all us in the world of education!

Dr Paul Shrimpton teaches at Magdalen College School, Oxford and is the author of Catholic Eton? Newman’s Oratory School.

He will be presenting in Rome on Friday 31 October at the Academic Symposium - Saint John Henry Newman, Doctor of the Universal Church: His Relevance Today.

Apostolic Letter: Drawing New Maps of Hope

Photograph courtesy of the Catholic Bishops Conference, taken at Birmingham Oratory