'Seek truth courageously' Pope urges Oxford college
On Friday, Pope Leo XIV met with a group from Oriel College for a private audience at the Vatican.
‘Seek truth courageously,’ Pope urges Oxford college
Pope Leo XIV met the Oriel College delegation at the Vatican on Friday
A delegation from a University of Oxford college was encouraged by the Pope to “seek the truth courageously” during a private audience at the Vatican.
On Friday, Pope Leo XIV received a group from Oriel College, led by its Provost Lord Mendoza, at the Apostolic Palace beside St Peter’s Square.
The papal audience came a year after the pontiff recognised former Oriel College fellow Saint John Henry Newman as a Doctor of the Church.
It also coincided with the 700th anniversary of Oriel’s royal foundation in 1326, with the pontiff praising the college’s “long and illustrious” history at Friday’s meeting.
Speaking to the delegation, the Pope commended Oriel, which has the formal name House of the Blessed Mary at Oxford, for preserving 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 Pope urged those present to “seek the truth courageously”.
He then spoke about St Newman, describing him 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”.
The 19th Century Oxford-based theologian and resident was canonised by Pope Francis in 2019, after the Vatican attributed two miracles to the former cardinal.
Six years later, Pope Leo recognised him as a Doctor of the Church, and appointed him co-patron of Catholic education, alongside St Thomas Aquinas.
In doing so, he made St Newman only the 38th person, and the first Briton born in the past thousand years, to receive the prestigious title.
“There was a great concreteness to his ideas,” the pontiff said of St Newman at Friday’s private audience.
“His religious convictions were rooted in his personal relationship with God, while his scholarship was both sublime and eminently practical.”
Pope Leo ended the audience by asking the Oriel delegation to “seek the truth courageously and to promote this integral anthropological vision”.
St Newman was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church during a ceremony in St Peter’s Square last year
During the ceremony, Mendoza presented the Pope with a 17th Century engraving of Oriel College from the first illustrated book of Oxford, published in 1675.
After the audience, the Oriel Provost said he was “deeply grateful” to the pontiff for receiving the college contingent and for his recognition of St Newman.
He also welcomed the pontiff’s first major teaching document of his papacy in May, which warned that artificial intelligence needed to be “disarmed”.
“Artificial intelligence should be neither idolised nor feared, but governed towards human dignity, the common good, solidarity and justice,” Lord Mendoza said.
“Our tutorial system’s sustained conversation between teacher and student is a small but resilient defence of human judgement and human presence.”