Catalino Arevalo

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Catalino Arevalo, S.J. (April 20, 1925 – January 18, 2023) was a Filipino Catholic priest and theologian. He joined the Jesuits at age 16 in 1941 and was ordained a priest on June 19, 1954. He earned a doctorate in dogmatic theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, studying under Jesuit theologian Francis A. Sullivan, and completed his degree in 1959. That year he became the first Filipino teacher at Woodstock College in the United States. He then taught at the San Jose Seminary in the Philippines until 1965, served as dean of the Loyola House of Studies (1965–1966), and was the first president of the Jesuit School of Theology (now Loyola School of Theology) from 1968 to 1971, remaining there as a teacher until 2010. Arevalo was the first Asian bishop to join the Holy See’s International Theological Commission and helped found the Theological Advisory Commission of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC), where he later served as chairman from 1985 to 1995 and as a theological adviser from 1970 to 1995. A 1970 trip to Latin America connected him with liberation theology scholars, influencing his work in the Philippines. He authored Evangelization in Modern Day Asia (1974), the key document for the FABC’s first plenary assembly in Taipei, which helped shape its theological direction. He was a spiritual adviser to former Philippine President Corazon Aquino starting August 21, 1983. Arevalo passed away at the Jesuit Health and Wellness Center in Quezon City at the age of 97.