The contribution of the University of Malta in the formation of the Maltese priests 1838-1850

Abstract

In my book, For Service alone, about the Institution of the Seminary of Malta, I wrote that when the Seminary opened its doors to six students on 25 March 1703, "the first group of well educated and ecclesiastically well-formed clergy was the beginning of a long line of priests who received their formation in the Seminary of Malta."

However, it should be said that in Malta the formation of priests was imparted also by the University of Malta through the Faculty of Theology. Ea semper (25 June 1777), the Motu proprio about Clerics and personal immunity, which Pope Pius VI addressed specifically to the Diocese of Malta, allows "the Bishop to confer the first Tonsure to the young man who, after his tenth birthday, has spent three years in a Seminary or in a College; if this was not possible, he should have dressed his clerical habit with the permission of the Bishop and during a three year period he had served a particular church assigned to him by the Bishop; or if any young man wanted to frequent any University to follow his studies, this time of study at the University would be accounted to his credit to merit the first Tonsure."