Saint John Henry Newman’s Words Against Cruelty to Animals

October 9th marks the Feast Day of St. John Henry Newman (1801-1890). He was proclaimed the 38th doctor of the church by Pope Leo XIV in 2025, and his feast day celebrates the official day of his conversion to Catholicism in 1845.

St. John Henry Newman was known for his powerful, thought-provoking sermons. In one delivered on Good Friday, he drew upon examples of cruelty, including toward animals, and condemned such acts. He made it clear that there was no place in civil society for harming helpless animals. He did so, he said, to “[stir] up your hearts and [make] you mourn over Christ’s sufferings, as you are called to do at this season.”

He said:

“Consider how very horrible it is to read the accounts which sometimes meet us of cruelties exercised on brute animals.... There is something so very dreadful, so satanic in tormenting those who never have harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power, who have weapons neither of offense nor defense, that none but very hardened persons can endure the thought of it.”

Saint John Henry Newman, Doctor of the Church, “The Crucifixion,” Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII

St. John Henry Newman also penned a beautiful prayer to St. Philip Neri, who was known for his kindness to animals and whose compassion for them is recognized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In the prayer, he wrote:

“Philip, my glorious Advocate, teach me to look at all I see around me after thy pattern as the creatures of God.

Let me never forget that the same God who made me made the whole world, and all men and all animals that are in it.

Gain me the grace to love all God’s works for God’s sake, and all men for the sake of my Lord and Saviour who has redeemed them by the Cross.”

Saint John Henry Newman, Doctor of the Church, Excerpt, Prayer to St. Philip Neri