The ‘Kindly Light’ of Catholic Education

Dec. 1, 2025

Drawing on the wisdom of St. John Henry Newman, Pope Leo XIV illuminates the way forward for Catholic schools in the AI era

By Leonard J. DeLorenzo

Dec. 1, 2025

Students and staff members of Holy Innocents School stand before custom-printed fencing screens donated by Msgr. John Cawley
Council 3629 in Lakewood, Calif., in 2022. The screens provide much-needed privacy to the playground of the school, which is
located in a busy urban neighborhood in Long Beach. — Students and staff members of Holy Innocents School stand before custom-printed fencing screens donated by Msgr. John Cawley Council 3629 in Lakewood, Calif., in 2022. The screens provide much-needed privacy to the playground of the school, which is located in a busy urban neighborhood in Long Beach. Last year, K of C councils provided more than $10 million and volunteered more than 1 million hours in support of Catholic schools and seminaries. (Photo by Gina Allen)

The algorithm knows what you want before you do. It serves up the next video and keeps you scrolling — all calibrated for engagement, not wisdom. For millions of students, this has become their experience of education: frictionless, individualized, profoundly lonely. We drown in information while starving for meaning.

Sixty years ago, with the declaration Gravissimum Educationis (On Christian Education), the Second Vatican Council proclaimed education a universal human right and called Catholic schools to be communities where truth, freedom and friendship could flourish. Today, when artificial intelligence can write essays, generate art and teach classes, we are again faced with the question: What is education really for? Our answer matters because it reveals what we think a human person is.

On Oct. 28, the 60th anniversary of Gravissimum Educationis, Pope Leo XIV released the apostolic letter Drawing New Maps of Hope. In this document, the Holy Father cuts through the fog of trendy educational discourse: We are not “skills profiles” to be optimized by algorithms but human beings with faces, stories and vocations (4.1).

Four days later, on All Saints’ Day, the pope proclaimed St. John Henry Newman — who was canonized in 2019 — a doctor of the Church and named him co-patron of Catholic education alongside St. Thomas Aquinas. Newman, the 19th-century Anglican who became Catholic at significant personal cost, understood that the quest for wisdom is always tied to vocation — to the universal call to holiness. As Catholic education confronts the digital revolution, Newman’s vision offers a strategy for engagement rather than retreat.

St. John Henry Newman — recently declared by Pope Leo XIV a doctor of the Church and co-patron, with St. Thomas Aquinas, of Catholic education — is pictured in 1887, near the end of his life. (The Print Collector/Alamy Stock Photo)

‘A LABORATORY OF DISCERNMENT’

When Gravissimum Educationis appeared in 1965, it heralded what Pope Leo calls “a season of trust.” Today’s digital environment has put that trust to the test. Technologies were supposed to democratize knowledge. Instead, they have fragmented attention and impoverished relationships. Even Catholic schools risk “soulless efficiency, the standardization of knowledge, which then becomes spiritual impoverishment” (9.1).

Yet the pope refuses pessimism. Precisely here, Catholic education can become “not a nostalgic refuge, but a laboratory of discernment, pedagogical innovation and prophetic witness” (11.1). The decisive point is not the technology itself but the use we make of it (9.3). The temptation for misuse runs deep — to reduce learning to skills, students to data, success to employment. Although heightened by new technologies, the problem is an old one: reducing the faith to one subject among others. On this point, the Holy Father quotes Newman’s The Idea of a University, first published in 1852: “Religious Truth is not only a portion, but a condition of general knowledge” (3.1).

Newman isn’t saying biology classes should stop for catechism. He’s making a more radical claim: The deepest questions about meaning and purpose aren’t additions to real knowledge — they’re the framework that makes knowledge possible. What does it mean to be human? What deserves our love? Why does truth matter? These questions are the horizon against which every other question finds its place.

An education that brackets ultimate questions becomes shallow. Newman’s story embodies the alternative. Born in 1801, he became an intellectual star at Oxford, an Anglican priest whose sermons drew crowds. Then, in 1845, he converted to Catholicism. It cost him the support of his family and friends, as well as his professional position as a fellow at Oxford. But Newman had learned to distinguish comfort from truth. He followed where his conscience led him, even into exile.

Naming St. John Henry Newman co-patron of education alongside St. Thomas Aquinas is not replacement but development — exactly what Newman taught about doctrine. Aquinas gives us architecture: the synthesis showing that grace perfects nature and faith harmonizes with reason. Newman gives us history: how truth grows in the Church’s life and how authentic development differs from corruption. Together they model what Catholic education must be — rooted yet growing, faithful yet creative.

Pope Leo XIV displays his apostolic letter Drawing New Maps of Hope, marking the 60th anniversary of the Vatican II declaration on Catholic education. With Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, looking on, the pope signed the letter before Mass with students from the pontifical universities of Rome at St. Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 27. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

‘SOME DEFINITE SERVICE’

In his homily for the feast of All Saints, Nov. 1, the Holy Father quoted Newman’s well-known meditation: “God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission.” Here’s the antidote to the algorithmic reduction of education: Your life shines because you discover you’re called — that your existence is marked by God’s personal love.

This is what Pope Leo offers through his apostolic letter and Newman’s elevation: an education that forms whole persons for lives of meaning, and a conviction that every human being carries irreducible dignity and a calling that deserves to be honored, nurtured and sent forth into the world.

The Holy Father identifies three priorities for Catholic education as formation rather than optimization:

First, develop the interior life of students. Young people live immersed in noise. Silence has become almost impossible — and with it, the capacity for discernment. In his All Saints’ Day homily, the pope invoked Newman’s hymn “Lead, Kindly Light,” written in 1833 during a moment of personal darkness and uncertainty. The hymn proclaims, “The night is dark, and I am far from home; lead Thou me on!” Education’s task is to offer this kindly light “to those who might otherwise remain imprisoned by the particularly insidious shadows of pessimism and fear.” The algorithm can predict what you’ll click next — often feeding your worst inclinations — but only God’s wisdom reveals who you’re called to become.

Second, place technology at the service of humanity. Technologies should enrich learning, not replace human encounter. What Pope Leo challenges is educational reform driven merely by workforce development. Skills matter, but when education becomes nothing more than skills acquisition, we’ve betrayed the human person. No algorithm can replace poetry, irony, love, art, imagination, discovery — even learning through mistakes.

Third, restore education as an expression of charity. Education can either build bridges or walls. In his homily, the pope quoted his apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te (I Have Loved You): “Does this mean that the less gifted are not human beings? Or that the weak do not have the same dignity as ourselves? Are those born with fewer opportunities of lesser value as human beings? Should they limit themselves merely to surviving? The worth of our societies, and our own future, depends on the answers we give to these questions” (95). In other words, where education remains the privilege of a few, Catholic education fails its mission.

What is the ultimate aim of these priorities? Nothing less than the universal call to holiness. The Holy Father recalled the words spoken by Pope Benedict XVI at Newman’s beatification in 2010: “What God wants most of all for each one of you is that you should become holy.”

‘SHINE LIKE STARS’

Pope Leo’s vision for Catholic education relies largely on the men and women who do the work of teaching. In his homily, he addressed educators directly, calling them to “shine like stars in the world” (Phil 2:15) — not by spectacular achievement, but through authentic commitment to truth-seeking and truth-sharing; not by dominating, but by serving, especially the young and the poor.

The Gospel for All Saints’ Day, on which Pope Leo preached, presents the Beatitudes — those seemingly paradoxical declarations that the poor, the persecuted, the peacemakers are blessed. What sounds absurd by worldly logic reveals a new interpretation when brought into contact with God’s kingdom. Jesus isn’t just another teacher. He’s the Master and Educator par excellence, the one whose life and teaching become the light by which we see everything else. Educators shine not by their own brilliance, but by reflecting his light.

Here’s the antidote to the algorithmic reduction of education: Your life shines because you discover you’re called — that your existence is marked by God’s personal love.

This is where Newman’s hymn takes on new depth. When Newman wrote “Lead, Kindly Light” amid darkness and confusion, he wasn’t asking for multiple lights or general illumination. He was seeking the Light — Christ himself, the only sure guide when our feet are unsteady and the path unclear. The Holy Father recalled Pope Francis’ repeated warning that nihilism is one of contemporary culture’s most dangerous maladies, threatening to cancel hope. Against this encircling gloom, education must offer not generic optimism but what Newman sought: Christ, the kindly light who leads through darkness.

This work requires identifying what Pope Leo calls “constellations” — patterns of Christ’s light already shining in dark times. Every educational context can become a gateway to dialogue and peace because Christ is present there, working through those who serve him. Schools and teachers don’t solve problems by their own power; they point to the Light who illuminates, who transforms, who gives meaning to our seeking and finding. Without Christ at the center, we offer nothing more than better techniques for navigating the darkness. With him, even our failures become occasions for encountering the One who is the way, the truth and the life.

*****

LEONARD J. DELORENZO, a Knight since 2023, is a professor of the practice in the McGrath Institute for Church Life (mcgrath.nd.edu) and concurrent professor in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.

Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles carries the monstrance from Sacred Heart Church, leading a Eucharistic procession through Altadena, Calif., on June 20.

The ‘Kindly Light’ of Catholic Education

‘A LABORATORY OF DISCERNMENT’

‘SOME DEFINITE SERVICE’

‘SHINE LIKE STARS’

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