April 5, 2018
10,000 Ojai Road
Santa Paula CA 93060
Contact: Anne Forsyth, Director of College Relations
(805) 525-4417
Hi-Res photos

Will also receive St. Thomas Aquinas Medallion

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

SANTA PAULA, CA—April 5— The Most. Rev. Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison, Wisconsin, has accepted President Michael F. McLean’s invitation to serve as Thomas Aquinas College’s 2018 Commencement Speaker.

“We are grateful that our longtime friend Bishop Morlino has agreed to come to California to join us for commencement,” says Dr. McLean. “We are honored that he will be part of this important day in the life of the college and its newest graduates.”

Commencement 2018 will mark the bishop’s second visit to Thomas Aquinas College. In 2007 he helped to inaugurate the new academic year by serving as the college’s convocation speaker. “You are being formed into exactly the kind of lay Christian faithful who will take up the job of being the instrument by which the Lord saves the world,” he told that year’s freshmen. “You are exactly who we want; you are exactly the people we need.”

President McLean commented, “As a priest, an educator, a pastor, and a bishop, as well as in his work in the field of bioethics, Bishop Morlino has been an unfailing champion of the Catholic Church’s teachings, particularly those concerning the intrinsic dignity of the human person. We very much look forward to hearing his address.”

At commencement, His Excellency will serve as the principal celebrant and homilist at the morning’s baccalaureate Mass, then deliver the commencement address at the graduation ceremony for the members of the Class of 2018, who hail from across the United States and abroad. Having completed the college’s rigorous, four-year curriculum — which includes mathematics, natural science, Latin, literature, philosophy, and theology — each graduate will receive a bachelor of arts degree in liberal arts. These new alumni will go on to a wide variety of pursuits, including law, medicine, business, military service, education, public policy, and journalism, as well as the priesthood and religious life.

About Bishop Robert Morlino

A native of Northeastern Pennsylvania and a graduate of the Jesuit-run Scranton Preparatory High School, Bishop Morlino was ordained to the priesthood for the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus on June 1, 1974. He holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Fordham University, a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, a master of divinity degree from the Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a doctorate in moral theology from the Gregorian University in Rome. He has taught philosophy at Loyola College in Baltimore, St. Joseph University in Philadelphia, Boston College, the University of Notre Dame, and St. Mary’s College in Indiana.

In 1981 His Excellency became a priest of the Diocese of Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he served for 12 years before Pope St. John Paull II named him Bishop of Helena, Montana, in 1999. In 2003, the Holy Father named him Bishop of Madison. Over the years, Bishop Morlino has served as chairman of two committees within the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Bishops’ Committee on the Diaconate and the Ad Hoc Committee on Health Care Issues and the Church. Since 2005 he has also served as chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Catholic Bioethics Center.

About Thomas Aquinas College

A four-year, co-educational institution, Thomas Aquinas College has developed over the past 47 years a solid reputation for academic excellence in the United States and abroad and is highly ranked by organizations such as The Princeton Review, U. S. News, and Kiplinger. At Thomas Aquinas College all students acquire a broad and fully integrated liberal education. The College offers one, four-year, classical curriculum that spans the major arts and sciences. Instead of reading textbooks, students read the original works of the greatest thinkers in Western civilization — the Great Books — in all the major disciplines: mathematics, natural science, literature, philosophy, and theology. The academic life of the college is conducted under the light of the Catholic faith and flourishes within a close-knit community, supported by a vibrant spiritual life. Graduates consistently excel in the many world-class institutions at which they pursue graduate degrees in fields such as law, medicine, business, theology and education. They have distinguished themselves serving as lawyers, doctors, business owners, priests, military service men and women, educators, journalists and college presidents. For additional information, visit www.thomasaquinas.edu..