UST Graduate School Regent Fr. Rodel Aligan, O.P. has been reelected for the fifth time as prior of the Priory of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Varsitarian has learned.
He succeeded Fr. Jesus Jay Miranda Jr., O.P., who held the post after ending his term as UST secretary general in 2021.
Aligan first became convent prior of the Priory of St. Thomas Aquinas in 2001. He has been reelected to the post five times since then.
In 2018, he held the post until he was replaced by Miranda.
Aligan was reelected on June 12 and officially installed to lead Dominicans in UST once again on July 6 during the Priory’s evening prayer.
According to the constitution of the Dominican friars, convent priors are democratically elected by solemnly professed friars with an “active voice” in the community, a model that predates modern democratic political systems.
Priors are elected every three years.
Aligan is a former dean of the Faculty of Sacred Theology, a position he held from 2008 to 2014 and 2016 to 2023.
Before he was reelected to lead the Priory in 2008, Aligan also sat as vice rector for religious affairs until 2011.
He served as the University’s secretary general from 1995 to 2001, prefect of theologians at the UST Central Seminary from 1981 to 2001, and regent of the Faculty of Arts and Letters from 1991 to 1995 and from 2015 to 2021.
He was a member of the Provincial Council of the Dominican Province of the Philippines and consultant for religious education of the Commission on Higher Education.
Aligan obtained his bachelor, licentiate, and doctorate degrees in Sacred Theology at the UST Ecclesiastical Faculties. He was ordained into the priesthood in 1981.
