The start the 2025/26 scholastic year on Monday marked the start of a new chapter in the history of St Aloysius College, with the first woman rector in its history welcoming the first-ever girls attending its secondary school.
While its sixth form, inaugurated in 1991, has always been co-educational, the rest of St Aloysius College started going co-ed in September 2018, with the first girls entering its primary school: the former Stella Maris School in Balzan.
With that cohort now starting secondary education, it is now the secondary school’s turn to start going co-ed: a process that will be brought to completion when they reach fifth form in four years.
As fate would have it, this development would coincide with the appointment of the college’s first-ever woman rector, Maria Montebello.
A former head of the state middle school at Tal-Ħandaq and of the Safi primary school, Montebello succeeds Fr Jimmy Bartolo, who moved to Rome after he was appointed secretary of education of the Society of Jesus – the Jesuits
Montebello is also the first layperson to be appointed as rector of the college, through the first selection process open to laypeople: the college had hitherto always been led by Jesuits.
Newsbook Malta visited the college for the occasion, with Montebello hailing the historic arrival of the first girls to attend secondary school at the college since its founding in 1907.
Montebello emphasised that the college’s priority remained to strengthen its students’ Ignatian formation, emphasising its key values of social justice, sustainability and responsibility.
The new rector also stressed that the school was not ending a tradition by admitting girls, but evolving with the times. She stressed that coeducation was a natural step, insisting that the school should reflect the realities of society.
Four centuries of Jesuit education in Malta
The Jesuits have long been associated with education in Malta, establishing the Collegium Melitense in 1592, a college that would be subsequently recognised as a university.
But the Knights ruling over Malta followed various other European powers in expelling the Jesuits in 1769: the Collegium was taken over by the state, becoming what is now known as the University of Malta.
The order would even be suppressed by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, though it survived this persecution primarily in Prussia and Russia – countries with a Protestant and Orthodox majority respectively – before it was restored in 1814 by Pope Pius VII.
The Jesuits’ return to Malta was ultimately linked to Catholics’ response to controversial Anglican missionary activity in Malta.
In 1846, the English Missionary Association had acquired a Balluta villa known as Bel-Vedere from a wealthy English merchant, and transformed it into the Malta Protestant College, to the chagrin of Malta’s Catholic intelligentsia.
Three wealthy Maltese men ultimately bought out the premises in 1865, and invited English Jesuits to run a Catholic college instead.
St Ignatius College opened in 1877 on the property – to this day known as Villa St Ignatius – though the premises would soon proved too small for the Jesuits’ plans.
In 1896, the order had built a complex in Birkirkara along the Malta Railway line to house young Jesuits in their formative years, though this project was short-lived.
The building had been vacant for a few years when the Jesuits vacated Balluta and used it to establish their new school – St Aloysius College – in 1907.
Article written by John Paul Cordina
Video and photo montage: Miguela Xuereb
Source: Newsbook.com.mt