By Chris Fisher
When Pope Leo XIV released his apostolic letter “Drawing New Maps of Hope” last October, he offered the Church a vision of education marked by a deep sense of tradition, love and justice. All people, rich and poor, deserve a Catholic education, grounded in the love of our great Catholic intellectual tradition. Accompanying this stirring reminder for the Church, the Holy Father simultaneously elevated St. John Henry Newman as co-patron of the Church’s educational mission. It was a striking gesture.
Newman, whose motto “cor ad cor loquitur” — “heart speaks to heart” — captured the essence of Christian formation, now stands beside St. Thomas Aquinas as a guide for the Church’s ministry of teaching.
The Holy Father reminds the faithful that, despite our digital age, “no algorithm can substitute what makes education human: poetry, irony, love, art, imagination, the joy of discovery and even learning from mistakes as an opportunity for growth.” In this, Pope Leo echoes Newman with great clarity. In a world where education often collapses into technical skill or ideological formation, Pope Leo calls us back to the deeper task: helping the young rediscover what it means to be human, to seek truth and to encounter God.
Newman gives us language for this work. As Pope Leo does today, Newman understood that the path to the intellect runs through the heart, and the path to the heart through the imagination.
Nowhere is this expressed more vividly than in his “Tamworth Reading Room” letters. “The heart is commonly reached,” Newman wrote, “not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us.” For Newman, ideas do not descend upon the soul as abstractions. They arrive clothed in story, beauty and lived example. We come to love the truth before we learn to articulate it.
This is why beauty plays such a central role in the renewal of Catholic education. Beauty is not ornament. Rather, it is a mode of knowing. Beauty trains attention, awakens desire and forms the imagination to recognize meaning, symbol, sign — even sacrament. In the Catholic tradition, beauty, truth and goodness belong together; to encounter one is to be led toward the others. When children memorize a poem, narrate a story or imitate a passage of great prose — as our principals experienced through the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education’s work with us this year — they are being introduced to these realities through a form suited to their nature. These practices do not distract from rigorous learning; they make rigorous learning possible. They teach children to notice, to listen, to attend, to enter the inner life of a text. And in a quiet way, they prepare the ground for faith.
Pope Leo writes that “desire and the heart must not be separated from knowledge: it would mean splitting the person,” and that Catholic education must hold together desire, intellect and wonder. Newman helps explain why. The imagination is the bridge between what we know and
what we love. It allows moral truth to take root in us before we can fully analyze it. It allows religious truth to become personal rather than merely conceptual. This is especially important for the young. A child does not first encounter God through syllogisms, but through the beauty of creation, the holy example of a teacher, the rhythm of prayer, the story of a saint, the experience of being loved.
As Catholic educators, we also inherit Newman’s broader vision of forming young people capable of making meaningful contributions to society. He believed education should develop clear judgment, articulate expression and a mind capable of grasping the whole. These qualities elevate public life and strengthen the bonds of civilization. They are as necessary for the world of San Francisco as they were for Victorian England. Teaching through beauty supports this aim. It enlarges the mind and refines the moral imagination, giving students the inner resources to recognize truth amid confusion and to act with integrity in a culture often marked by uncertainty.
In elevating Newman, Pope Leo XIV has given the Church a companion for this moment. Newman understood the fragility of faith in a fragmented age, and he believed deeply in the power of beauty and imagination to draw the soul toward God. His motto — “cor ad cor loquitur” — remains a fitting description of what Catholic education hopes to achieve. It reminds us that education is always personal, always relational and always dependent on grace.
As we continue the work of renewing Catholic education in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, I invite our community to turn to Newman as an intercessor and guide. His insights remain fresh, and his heart remains generous. He teaches us that truth becomes compelling when it is beautiful, and that beauty reveals its purpose when it speaks to the heart. And it is beauty that will lead us and our students to Christ. As St. Augustine — the spiritual father of both Newman and Pope Leo XIV — once prayed: “Late have I loved you, O beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! … I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”
May our hearts and the hearts of those we teach every day burn ever more greatly for the peace of Christ.
Chris Fisher is the superintendent of the Department of Catholic Schools for the Archdiocese of San Francisco
