Pope Leo XIV urges Oxford’s Oriel College to ‘seek the truth courageously’ at Vatican audience

Pope Leo XIV has told a delegation from Oxford’s Oriel College to “seek the truth courageously,” using the audience to link the institution’s 700-year history with the legacy of one of its most celebrated former fellows, St. John Henry Newman.

The Pope met with the Oriel group, led by its provost, Lord Mendoza, on Friday in a private audience at the Apostolic Palace, next to St. Peter’s Square. The meeting took place during the year marking the 700th anniversary of Oriel’s royal foundation, and the Pope spoke about the college’s “long and illustrious” history.

In his remarks, the Pope praised Oriel, formally the House of the Blessed Mary at Oxford, for holding onto its Christian identity. “This identity is key to what has made and can continue to make Oriel not just an academic institution, but a true community of faith and scholarship in its deepest meaning,” he said.

The audience came about a year after Pope Leo recognized Newman as a Doctor of the Church, and he returned to that theme by praising Newman as “a shining example of a scholar who not only showed the inseparability of faith and reason in his works, but even more admirably in his life.”

Newman, a 19th-century Oxford theologian and a cardinal, was canonized by Pope Francis in 2019 after the Vatican attributed two miracles to him. Pope Leo later declared him a Doctor of the Church during a ceremony in St. Peter’s Square and named him co-patron of Catholic education alongside St. Thomas Aquinas. The designation made Newman the 38th person — and the first Briton born in the past thousand years — to receive the title.

The Pope closed the audience by urging the delegation to “seek the truth courageously and to promote this integral anthropological vision,” according to Vatican News. He also reflected on the practical quality of Newman’s scholarship, saying, “There was a great concreteness to his ideas. His religious convictions were rooted in his personal relationship with God, while his scholarship was both sublime and eminently practical.”

During the audience, Mendoza presented the Pope with a 17th-century engraving of Oriel from the first illustrated book of Oxford, published in 1675. After the meeting, the provost said he was “deeply grateful” to the Pope for receiving the college contingent and for recognizing Newman’s contribution to Catholic thought.

Mendoza also welcomed the Pope’s first major teaching document of his papacy, issued in May, which warned that artificial intelligence needed to be “disarmed.” He said artificial intelligence should be neither idolized nor feared, but governed toward human dignity, the common good, solidarity, and justice. He argued that Oriel’s tutorial system, with its sustained conversation between teacher and student, remained a small but resilient defense of human judgment and human presence.

The visit underscored the Vatican’s continued engagement with academic life, and placed Newman’s legacy at the center of broader questions about faith, reason, and the future of education.