The St John’s Co-Cathedral Foundation has appointed Mgr Emmanuel Agius as its new president, effective as of July 31. This will be the third time for Mgr Agius to be serving as president of the foundation.
Archbishop Charles Scicluna appointed Mgr Agius as a member of the Metropolitan Cathedral Chapter on January 25, 2018 and as a member of the St John’s Co-Cathedral Foundation on August 1, 2019, and, consequently, in 2020, 2022 and 2024 as president of the foundation.
In accepting his role, Mgr Agius said: “I am pleased that HG the Archbishop appointed me once again president of the St John’s Co-Cathedral Foundation. I thank him for his trust in me. We have a year of exciting projects and innovative initiatives ahead of us! I am looking forward to continue to consolidate the co-cathedral as a sacred space of worship and to showcase our nation’s prime cultural and religious monument and its artefacts on the international landscape.”
Mgr Agius, a former dean of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Malta, holds an undergraduate (S.Th.B.) and postgraduate (S.Th.L.) degrees in philosophy and theology from the University of Malta and an MA in philosophy as well as a doctorate in sacred theology (S.Th.D) from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. He currently serves as a professor of moral theology and philosophical ethics at the University of Malta.
His academic background includes post-doctoral research in bioethics at the University of Tübingen, Germany, supported by an Alexander-von-Humboldt Stiftung fellowship; at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, as a Fulbright scholar; and at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, the US, under a Theodore Hesburgh scholarship.
He has served as the head of the Department of Moral Theology at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Malta. Since 2005, he has been a member of the European Group of Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE), an advisory group to the European Commission and a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life. He is also the moderator of the Commission on Ethics of the European Bishops’ Commission at the European Union (COMECE).
An accomplished author and editor, Mgr Agius has published numerous works on bioethical, social and environmental issues as well as on marriage and sexuality in international peer-reviewed academic journals.
The St John’s Co-Cathedral Foundation is responsible for the administration of St John’s Co-Cathedral. The foundation ensures the effective conservation and management of the church and museum as both a historic and architectural monument and a sacred place of worship.