Reacting to word that Pope Leo XIV would name St. John Henry Newman a doctor of the Church, Archbishop Bernard Hebda said he was thrilled, and the director of the St. Lawrence Newman Center serving the Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota said it was great news.
During a July 31 interview at the Archdiocesan Catholic Center in St. Paul, the same day the announcement was made, Archbishop Hebda held in one hand a short letter written by St. John Henry Newman in 1875 that he recently came into possession of, and in the other a small portrait of the saint that he keeps near his desk.
The image “reminds me to ask for his intercession as I go about the sometimes challenging work of being an archbishop here in St. Paul and Minneapolis, but always asking him most particularly for the gift of wisdom, which I think he demonstrated in the course of his life,” the archbishop said. “And now it’s certainly going to be recognized with the title of doctor of the Church.”
The Vatican announced the decision after Pope Leo’s July 31 audience with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.
The title has been bestowed on saints whose doctrinal writings and teachings are considered to have special authority. St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great and St. Jerome were the first four doctors of the Church. Now, St. John Henry Newman, a 19th-century theologian, intellectual, preacher and convert to Catholicism will join them and 33 other saints so named.
Father Jake Anderson, pastor and director of St. Lawrence Catholic Church and Newman Center in Minneapolis, said St. John Henry Newman had a brilliant mind, but he insisted that the intellect be wedded to the heart and mind of God.
The saint’s writings and teaching inspired Newman Centers — Catholic campus ministry centers at secular universities — which try to emulate his thought, Father Anderson said. To be a strong Catholic is to have a strong mind to love, know and follow the truth, he said. “We want to have the mind and the heart unite,” he said.
Archbishop Hebda said that early in his priesthood he was a Newman Center chaplain, and he is pleased with the ministry being done at St. Lawrence. Before he was a priest, he thought God might be calling him to be a member of an Oratory of St. Philip Neri, a communal way of priestly life St. John Henry Newman brought to the English-speaking world.
An aspiring Oratory of St. Philip Neri is in the Twin Cities, with Fathers Byron Hagan, Bryce Evans and Kyle Etzel, and a novice.
“I pray for them all the time,” Archbishop Hebda said. “I’m really excited that we do have a group of priests in our archdiocese who are striving to live that model of oratory life. I’m hoping that they grow, and I look forward to the time when they’re formally established as an oratory.”
Father Hagan, who also leads St. Mary in St. Paul as a priest in solidum with Father Evans, said St. John Henry Newman is a “sort of ‘second founder’ of the Oratory of St. Philp and therefore a co-patron of ours. But he’s long been a spiritual and intellectual companion to us all, and especially for English-speaking Catholics, and converts, like myself.”
OSV News contributed to this report.
