St. John Henry Newman to be declared a doctor of the Church
July 31, 2025
The Holy See Press Office announced on July 31 that St. John Henry Newman (1801-1890) will be proclaimed a doctor of the Universal Church.
“On July 31, 2025, the Holy Father Leo XIV received in audience His Eminence Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints,” according to the announcement. “During the same audience, the Holy Father confirmed the affirmative opinion of the Plenary Session of Cardinals and Bishops, Members of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, regarding the title of Doctor of the Universal Church that will soon be conferred on Saint John Henry Newman, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, Founder of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri in England.”
Declared venerable in 1991, beatified in 2010, and canonized in 2019, Newman will become the 38th doctor of the Church.
Newman’s works on theology (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent) and liberal education (The Idea of a University) have long been viewed as masterpieces, as have his autobiographical Apologia Pro Vita Sua and his “Dream of Gerontius,” later set to music by Sir Edward Elgar. Newman’s sermons, both before and after his 1845 conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism, have also been treasured as models of eloquence.
Pope Leo XIII created Newman a cardinal early in his pontificate (in 1879, a year after the papal election), much as Pope Leo XIV is declaring Newman a doctor of the Church early in his own pontificate. Upon being created a cardinal, Newman said:
For thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion. Never did Holy Church need champions against it more sorely than now, when, alas! it is an error overspreading, as a snare, the whole earth; and on this great occasion, when it is natural for one who is in my place to look out upon the world, and upon Holy Church as in it, and upon her future, it will not, I hope, be considered out of place, if I renew the protest against it which I have made so often.
Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true ... Such is the state of things in England, and it is well that it should be realised by all of us; but it must not be supposed for a moment that I am afraid of it. I lament it deeply, because I foresee that it may be the ruin of many souls; but I have no fear at all that it really can do aught of serious harm to the Word of God, to Holy Church, to our Almighty King, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, Faithful and True, or to His Vicar on earth.
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