April 24, 2016, 6:29p.m. – DOMINICAN friars in the University will hold a convocation tomorrow, April 25, to formally begin the process of selecting UST’s 97th rector, Acting Rector Fr. Richard Ang, O.P. told the Varsitarian.
“The election [will] be held next Monday, that is April 25. So, the community, the convocation … will be selecting three nominees and from those three names will come the one who will be duly appointed rector by Rome,” Fr. Ang said in a chance interview.
To qualify, a candidate must be a Dominican, a Filipino citizen and must have a civil or an ecclesiastical doctorate degree. He said 15 to 20 candidates were eligible to become UST’s 97th rector. The Dominican priory in UST has around 40 brethren.
The process of choosing the Rector of the Pontifical University is akin to the selection of a diocesan bishop, beginning with the closed-door meeting of Dominican friars.
After the convocation, the University Vice Chancellor, Fr. Gerard Francisco Timoner, III, O.P., will approve the three candidates and present the names to the Academic Senate, which will then scrutinize and rank the candidates. The Senate is composed of the Vice Chancellor, who is the provincial or head of the Dominican Province of the Philippines, and the University’s vice rectors, deans and secretary general.
The Vice Chancellor then transmits the ranked list to the Board of Trustees, whose members include the vice rectors, the secretary general and other Dominican friars.
The names and credentials of the chosen candidates will be submitted to the Master of the Order, Fr. Bruno Cadoré, O.P. The Master will endorse the ranked list of candidates to the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education for final evaluation.
The Holy See will then issue the declaration “nihil obstat,” Latin for “nothing obstructs” or “there is no obstacle,” and gives the name of the chosen nominee back to the Master of the Order, who makes the official appointment.
Fr. Ang, the University vice rector, assumed the position of Acting Rector after the 96th Rector, Fr. Herminio Dagohoy, O.P. stepped down last March 31.
Fr. Ang, dean of the Ecclesiastical Faculty of Philosophy, finished philosophy at the Faculty of Arts and Letters in 1990, sacred theology at the Faculty of Sacred Theology in 1997, master of arts in theology in 1999 and doctor of philosophy in 2010. Jerome P. Villanueva
