Pope to bestow one of Catholic Church’s highest honors on Anglican convert John Henry Newman

Pope Benedict XVI, right, celebrates a beatification mass for Cardinal John Henry Newman in Birmingham, England, Sunday, Sept. 19, 2010. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV decided Thursday to declare St. John Henry Newman a “doctor” of the church, bestowing one of the Catholic Church’s highest honors on the deeply influential 19th century Anglican convert who remains a unifying figure among conservatives and progressives.

The Vatican said Leo confirmed the opinion of the Vatican’s saint-making office during an audience with its prefect, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, and would make the decision official soon.

The designation, which has been in the works for years, is one of the most significant decisions of Leo’s young papacy and also carries a personal meaning. Newman was strongly influenced by St. Augustine of Hippo, the inspiration of the pope’s Augustinian religious order, and Leo’s namesake, Pope Leo XIII, made Newman a Catholic cardinal in 1879 after his conversion.

A theologian and poet, Newman is best known for his writings and sermons on the development of doctrine, truth and the nature of a university. He 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 great theologians of the 19th century,” said the Episcopal Bishop of Long Island, Rt. Rev. R. William Franklin. “He was unique in having shaped both Anglicans and Roman Catholics. No one in recent history can match that achievement.”

The title of doctor is reserved for people whose writings have greatly served the universal Catholic Church. Only three-dozen people have been given the title, including the 5th century St. Augustine, St. Francis de Sales and St. Teresa of Avila.

Unifying figure

Newman experts said the decision to add the British theologian to their ranks was deeply significant, given Newman’s contribution to Christian understanding of conscience and education — and his near-universal appeal to progressives and conservatives alike.

Jack Valero, who was spokesman for Newman’s 2010 beatification and 2019 canonization ceremonies, said he had never come across anyone who had a problem with him. If back then Newman was the perfect unifying figure for a polarized church, he is even more so now, for a new pope who has made unity a core priority of his pontificate, Valero said.

“You know, I look at Pope Leo and I hear him say, ‘We need unity, we need peace,’ and so on and I think, ‘Here’s the man who’s going to make it happen,’” he said.

The first American pope vowed during his May 18 installation mass that he would work to heal divisions in the church so that it could become a force for peace.

Leo has also repeatedly affirmed his identity as an Augustinian. Many scholars have long considered Newman to be the Augustine of the modern era, no easy feat considering the tough Vatican criteria for declaring a church doctor.

The Vatican considers among other things the candidate’s holiness in life, the eminence of his or her doctrinal and theological teaching and their enduring influence on the church. That has has meant that there have been only 37 doctors, and only one other (St. Teresa of Avila) who lived in the last 600 years, noted Mike Moreland, professor of law and religion at Leo’s alma mater, Villanova University.

But Newman “kind of meets these criteria that the doctors of the church are held to represent,” he said in an interview.

Newman’s conversion

Anglicans split from Rome in 1534 when English King Henry VIII was refused a marriage annulment. In the centuries that followed, Catholics were fined, discriminated against and killed for their 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.

Newman’s path to being declared a doctor in the Catholic Church has been exceptionally quick. Pope Benedict XVI beatified him during a visit to Britain in 2010 and Pope Francis made him a saint in 2019, with then-Prince Charles in attendance.

Francis was then on the receiving end of a concerted push by English-speaking bishops, in particular, to make him a doctor.

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Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press