Father Daniel Callus, 1888–1965

Extract

The Order of Preachers, which has such a clear individuality in the Church, has nevertheless among its gifted sons many different shades of character and fields of achievement. To the outside world it is the order of the great theologians, the order of strict orthodoxy, the order of St Thomas, of Cajetan, of Bariez, of John of St Thomas, and in our own time of P?re Gardei! and P?re Garrigou-Lagrange. The historian thinks also of the great inquisitors, of Jacob Sprenger and his Malleus Ma/eficarum, of Torquemada and the formidable Melchior Cano. By contrast with these there has always been a strain of the revolutionary, of the liberal and of the avant-garde, Savonarola, Las Casas, Lacordaire Vincent McNabb and Yves Congar. And finally, there is the recurrent type of the dedicated scholar, William of Moerbeke, Heinrich Denifle, Pierre Mandonnet and P?re Vicaire. And where shall we fit in Eckhardt, Tauler and Suso ? Into which of these groups shall we place Fr Daniel ?

His curriculum vitae is a varied one. Angelo Callus was born in 1888 in Malta, of Maltese parents but ultimately of Greek ancestry, and I am told the first Callus in the island was Greek physician to the Grand Master De La Vallette, the hero of the first siege of the island. He became a friar sixty years ago at the age of seventeen, and studied at Florence and Rome with a brilliant record, becoming Master of Sacred Theology at the unusually early age of thirty-six in 1924.