Chapel Unites Newman and Aquinas, Co-Patrons of Catholic Education

“It is a great joy to include St. John Henry Newman among the Doctors of the Church, and, at the same time … to name him, together with St. Thomas Aquinas, as co-Patron of the Church’s educational mission,” proclaimed His Holiness Pope Leo XIV in his 2025 All Saints’ Day homily. For Thomas Aquinas College, this declaration was nothing short of providential as, since 2021, statues of both saints have adorned the altar in Our Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel. 

“I would venture to say that we are the only church in the world with both Newman and Thomas featured so prominently in the sanctuary,” comments Rev. Greg Markey, Head Chaplain for the New England campus. “It was almost prophetic that they were put up there together.” 

The statues of St. John Henry Newman and St. Thomas Aquinas stand in two niches above the altar in the New England chapel, flanking the central scene of St. John the Beloved and the Blessed Mother at the foot of the Cross. All five statues were gifts of the late Rev. Paul Lamb, who asked that St. John Henry be set across from the College’s patron, representing the fullness of the Catholic intellectual tradition. 

“Fr. Lamb had a great devotion to both Newman and Aquinas,” says Fr. Markey. “We have to give him the credit for placing them together long before Pope Leo named them co-patrons of Catholic education.” 

Complementing the two saints’ visages, the Chapel also houses relics of both Doctors of the Church. St. Thomas’s relic, a gift from former chaplain Rev. Paul Raftery, O.P., resides behind a glass pane in the side of the high altar. And embedded in the freestanding altar is a rare relic of St. John Henry — one of his hairs — gifted to the New England campus by His Eminence Rev. Raymond Cardinal Burke. On March 7, 2022, the Most Rev. William D. Byrne, Bishop of Springfield, installed both relics in the Chapel’s altars at its Dedication Mass. 

Set together in Our Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel, the two co-patrons of Catholic education serve to guide students as they seek the truth through careful study of Aquinas’s Summa, immersed in the College’s rigorous Catholic liberal arts program that shapes both the minds and hearts of its students — just the kind of college Newman dreamed of creating. 

“Fr. Louis Bouyer once wrote: ‘Just as Augustine was the great voice of the Fathers and Aquinas was the great voice of the Medievals, Newman is the great voice of the modern era,’” says Fr. Markey. “I think that helps to synthesize in a certain way just how monumental a figure Newman is and will continue to be in the Church’s history. It is quite fitting that he stands with Aquinas as a co-patron of Catholic education and fellow Doctor of the Church.” 

The Holy Father agreed in his All Saint’s homily: “Newman’s impressive spiritual and cultural stature will surely serve as an inspiration to new generations whose hearts thirst for the infinite, and who, through research and knowledge, are willing to undertake that journey which, as the ancients said, takes us per aspera ad astra, through difficulties to the stars.”