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A tapestry of St. John Henry Newman hangs from the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Nov. 1, 2025, during the Mass in which Pope Leo XIV declared the 19th-century English cardinal and theologian a doctor of the church. The liturgy concluded the Jubilee of the World of Education.
CNS photo/Lola Gomez
November 3, 2025
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CNS photo/Vatican Media
Vatican City
The same day Pope Leo XIV proclaimed St. John Henry Newman a doctor of the church, he also named the British saint patron of the Pontifical Urbanian University in Rome.
In a document signed Nov. 1 and released Nov. 3, Pope Leo said he made the decision so that St. Newman would "intercede for this academic institution and be, for all those who are formed within it for the missionary service of the church, a shining model of faith and of sincere pursuit of the truth."
St. Newman, who joined the Catholic Church in 1845 after ministering as an Anglican priest, studied at the Pontifical Urbanian College from Nov. 9, 1846, until June 28, 1847, according to the website of the former Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. He was ordained a Catholic priest in the college church May 30, 1847.
The request to name St. Newman patron of the now-university, the Vatican said, was made by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, grand chancellor of the university and pro-prefect of the congregation's successor, the Dicastery for Evangelization's Section for the First Evangelization and New Particular Churches.
The Pontifical Urbanian College of the Propagation of the Faith was instituted by Pope Urban VIII in 1627 to train priests for missionary work. It occupied a building in the center of Rome until 1926 when it moved to its current location on the Janiculum Hill overlooking the Vatican.
The university enrolls more than 1,300 students from more than 100 countries.
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