Pope Leo XIV tells Oriel College delegation to ‘seek the truth with courage’

Newman, a former Oriel fellow recently recognised by Pope Leo as a Doctor of the Church and named co-patron of Catholic education. The Pope described Newman as a ''shining example'' of how faith and reason can work together. He highlighted Newman's mix of concrete religious conviction and scholarship that was both ''sublime and eminently practical.''

Pope Leo urged the delegation to place human dignity at the centre of education and academic work. He cited Newman's vision of a Christian formation that measures education by human dignity, justice, and the capacity to serve the common good, and encouraged Oriel's members to follow that approach in scholarship and college life.

Connections to contemporary challenges and AI

Members of the delegation, including Revd Dr Rob Wainwright (Chaplain of Oriel's Anglican Chapel) and Lord Mendoza, explicitly linked the Pope's message to contemporary educational challenges, notably artificial intelligence. Revd Dr Wainwright referenced the Pope's recent encyclical on AI and said Newman's integrated model of truth-seeking is relevant to education today. Lord Mendoza argued AI should neither be idolised nor feared but governed towards human dignity, the common good, solidarity, and justice.

Tutorial system as a practical defence

Lord Mendoza praised Oxford's tutorial system as a means of resisting AI's growing influence in education. He described tutorials as a sustained conversation between teacher and student and characterised them as a ''small but resilient defence of human judgement and human presence'' in assessment, tutoring, and teaching.

Oriel's identity and Newman's local connection

Oriel—formally the House of the Blessed Mary at Oxford—for maintaining a Christian identity through centuries of change, saying this identity contributes to what makes Oriel a community of faith and scholarship. Revd Dr Wainwright reiterated Newman's historical connection to Oriel and to the tutorial tradition, and said it was encouraging that faith continues to contribute to college life across a diverse membership.

What this means for Oriel and for students

The audience emphasised continuity between a historical model of education and several present-day concerns: the ethical framing of research and teaching, the preservation of human judgement in assessment, and a conception of learning that measures worth by service to human dignity and the common good. Delegation leaders took the Pope's remarks as a prompt to apply Newman's integrated approach while adapting rituals and practices—such as tutorials—to the realities of AI and wider technological change.

The Pope's central exhortation was straightforward: seek truth courageously, guided by an educational formation that holds human dignity and the common good at its center. His praise of Newman offered a concrete intellectual and spiritual model rather than abstract instruction, and college leaders presented the message as directly relevant to current policy and practice debates about technology and pedagogy.