A SPANISH missionary was elected as the new prior provincial of the Our Lady of the Rosary Province of the Order of Preachers on Thursday, Aug. 21.
Fr. Mariano González Martín, O.P. was named to the post during the elective chapter of the Dominican province at the Royal Monastery of Santo Tomás in Avila, Spain.
Master General Fr. Gerard Francisco Timoner III, O.P., confirmed him on the same day.
Born in Salamanca, Spain, on April 30, 1967, Martín entered the Santo Domingo Convent in Toledo in 1984 as a novice and received the Dominican habit.
He made his first religious profession to the Order in 1985 and professed solemn vows in 1989.
He obtained a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at the San Pedro Martír Convent in Madrid and completed his theology studies in 1989.
Martín went to the Angelicum University in Rome for further studies and returned to Spain to be ordained to the priesthood on July 4, 1992.
He earned a degree in canon law from the Catholic University of America in Washington from 1992 to 1994.
The new prior provincial lived for a few months in the Philippines, 16 years in South Korea, and Japan, where he has resided since 2013 as a parochial vicar.
When the Dominican friars arrived in Cavite from Acapulco, Mexico, they established the Province of Our Lady of the Rosary in 1587.
The missionary province includes the Dominican presences in the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, South Korea and Macau.
UST was under the charge of the Holy Rosary Province until it was gradually turned over to the Filipino Dominicans. The Dominican Province of the Philippines, formed in 1971, took over UST in 2013.
