This morning (July 31, 2025), our staff awoke to the news that Pope Leo XIV has approved St. John Henry Newman to be bestowed the title of Doctor of the Church.
As of the time of this writing, there are 37 Doctors of the Church with Newman set to become the 38th. These figures, ranging from popes to mystics, are figures recognized as contributing greatly to the theology and faith of the universal Church through their writings and studies. Some of the most well-known Doctors include St. Thomas Aquinas and St.Thérèse of Lisieux, both of whom are represented in the Special Collections on campus.
Canonized in 2019, John Henry Newman (1801-1890) was an English theologian, writer, and priest. A convert from Anglicism to Catholicism in 1845, Newman was made a Cardinal in 1879 by Pope Leo XIII. A proponent of ecumenism and Catholic education, he was instrumental in the founding of the Catholic University of Ireland in 1854. It is in that role that a 1885 letter came into the possession of our archives.
Following the 1884 Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, the American Catholic bishops called for the establishment of a national Catholic university (today’s CatholicU!). While the University would not be formally chartered by the Vatican until 1887, word of this development spread across the Atlantic as the American hierarchy sought to fundraise for the University’s development.
Upon learning of a financial appeal sent out in 1885 by Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore, Cardinal Newman wrote to Gibbons, praising the effort to open a national Catholic university:
“Oct. 10, 1885
My dear Lord Archbishop,
I have welcomed with the warmest interest the eloquent appeal of your University Board to the Catholics of the United States, which has come to me from America through the kindness of an anonymous friend.
At a time when there is so much in this part of the world to depress and trouble us as to our religious prospects, the tidings which your circular conveys of the actual commencement of so great an undertaking on the other side of the Ocean on the part of the Church will rejoice the hearts of all educated Catholics in these Islands.
With this thought before me, I cannot help feeling it to be out of place to notice what is merely personal to myself; still I may be allowed by your Grace and the other members of the Board briefly to express my deep sense of the singular honour they have done me by introducing into their Appeal a quotation from what I wrote years ago upon the subject of Universities.
It leads me in simple gratitude, were I not already bound by faith and brotherly love, to pray for an abundant blessing from above on a design so necessary for the growth and stability of the Church in the vast regions which Divine Providence has opened upon her.
I am
My dear Lord Archbishop,
Your Grace’s humble and affectionate
Servant,
John H. Card. Newman”
It is fitting that the founder of Catholic University (Pope Leo XIII) made Newman a Cardinal, and an American-born Pope Leo is now making him a Doctor.
This encouraging letter from a saint and soon-to-be Doctor of the Church is but one example of the history of Catholic education in the University archives. Learn more by checking out our exhibit on One Hundred Years of Catholic Schools (1893–1993)