The St John’s Co-Cathedral Foundation on Thursday (today) announced the appointment of Emmanuel Agius as its new President, effective from 31st July 2024.

This will be the third time that Monsignor Professor Agius will be serving as President of the foundation.

Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna appointment Mgr Agius as a member of the Metropolitan Cathedral Chapter on 25th January 2018, and as a member of the St John’s Co-Cathedral Foundation on 1st August 2019.

He was appointed President of the foundation in 2020, 2022, and now in 2024.

Accepting the role, Mgr Agius said that he is pleased that he has been named in the role once again, thanking the Archbishop for his trust.

“We have a year of exciting projects and innovative initiatives ahead of us. I am looking forward to continuing 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,” he continued.

The St John’s Co-Cathedral Foundation is responsible for the administration of St John’s Co-Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage site and an international treasure. The foundation aims to ensure the effective conservation and management of the church and museum as both a historic and architectural monument and a sacred place of worship.

The foundation stated that it is confident that under Mgr Agius’s leadership, it will “continue to thrive and uphold its mission.”

Mgr Agius is a former Dean of the Faculty of Theology at University of Malta, and holds undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in philosophy and theology from the same university. He has a Master of Arts in Philosophy as well as a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium).

He currently serves as a Professor of Moral Theology and Philosophical Ethics at University of Malta.

His academic background includes post-doctoral research in bioethics at University of Tübingen (Germany), supported by an Alexander-von-Humboldt Stiftung fellowship; at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. (United States) as a Fulbright scholar; and at University of Notra Dame, Indiana (United States) under a Theodore Hesburgh scholarship.

Mgr Agius’s experience also includes time as Head of the Department of Moral Theology at the Faculty of Theology at 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).

Mgr Agius is also an accomplished author and editor, having published numerous works on bioethical, social and environmental issues, as well as on marriage and sexuality in international peer-reviewed academic journals.