The responsibility of the intellectual

Abstract

I am honoured to be asked by the Senate of the University of Malta to deliver today’s oration on the occasion of the conferment of doctoral and master degrees from various Faculties of our Alma Mater. Graduates, you may not quite appreciate the historical significance of this occasion, but today you walk in a proud tradition that stretches back over four-and-a-half centuries – to the setting up by the Society of Jesus of the Collegium Melitense authorised by Pope Pius IV on the 29th August 1561 and confirmed by Pope Gregory XIII in 1578. The institution that incorporated the church we are gathered in was finally built in 1602 and its doors were opened “in the interest of youth, for the common weal and in honour of the City of Valletta”. After Grandmaster Pinto expelled the Jesuits from Malta, Pope Clement XIV on the 20th October 1769 granted approval for the institution to be changed to a Pubblica Universitá di Studi Generali “with the privileges, prerogatives, pre-eminences, favours and honours granted to other public Universities”.