St John Henry Newman is surely Anglicanism’s greatest and ever-expanding gift to the Roman Catholic Church. This view is now further fortified by the recent news that Pope Leo XIV has decided to confer upon Newman the title, Doctor of the Church.1A company that now has 38 members, including the four ‘outstanding Fathers of the Church’ given this title in the early Middle Ages: Gregory the Great, Ambrose, Augustine of Hippo and Jerome, as well as the ‘Three Great Hierarchs’ of the Byzantine church: John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, and Gregory of Nazianzus.
A good number of conservative Roman Catholics have taken this to be a most promising harbinger of future travel in their direction by the current Pope.2E.g.,