On Thursday 14 March 2019, Għaqda Studenti tat-Teoloġija, in collaboration with the Faculty of Theology, held the annual Aquinas Lecture in honour of St Thomas Aquinas.
Rev. Prof. Joseph Carola, S.J. from the Pontificia Università Gregoriana delivered a lecture on 'Making Patristics Pertinent: Theological Echoes and Anticipations from John Henri Newman's 1833 Mediterranean Tour'.
Prof. Carola was born in Houston, Texas, in 1962. Having entered the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus in 1980, he was ordained priest in 1993. He studied philosophy and modern foreign languages at Saint Louis University as well as theology at the Weston School of Theology and the Pontifical Gregorian University. In 2001 he obtained his doctorate in theology and patristic sciences from the Patristic Institute Augustinianum in Rome. He is the author of 'Augustine of Hippo: The Role of the Laity in Ecclesial Reconciliation' (2005). He has contributed to the 'Augustinus-Lexikon' (2008) and published in Augustinian Studies, Gregorianum, and Faith. Since 2002 he has been a professor of patristic theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
This year's event marked the 75th anniversary of the first Aquinas Lecture. The lecture by Prof. Carola was accompanied by a harp musical solo and was held in the Old Refectory Hall at the Archbishop's Curia, Floriana.