By Lara Pickford-Gordon Tuesday, February 5 2013

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Learned judges: Justice Anthony Carmona in company with Justice Maureen Ragnath-Lee during the opening of the 2012/2013 law term last November....

When elected, Justice Anthony Thomas Aquinas Carmona will be the second Roman Catholic to take office as President after the late Sir Ellis Clarke (1976-1987).

Responding to Carmona’s nomination, Fr Garfield Rochard, parish priest of the Church of the Assumption in Maraval where Carmona attends mass with his family, said “generally” persons who have held the post of President were “legal luminaries” except for the current President George Maxwell Richards who “was a luminary in the field of academics.”

Sir Ellis Clarke, TT’s first President, ANR Robinson, Noor Hassanali had legal backgrounds. Hassanali was a retired High Court judge. Carmona is named after St Thomas Aquinas, who is regarded as one the pre-eminent saints of the Catholic Church.

Rochard said it was the Catholic faith of Carmona’s parents to name their baby after an eminent Diocesan theologian in the Catholic Church.

“He is one of the great theologians who gave us the first catechism question and answer,” he noted.

Rochard said whether Carmona’s mother foresaw or had a wish for it to be, by naming her son, “She identified him as a luminary and intellectual. He has a tall order to live out in life and lift up the country,” said Rochard.

Monsignor Christian Pereira said Carmona was an ex-student of Presentation College and recalled that he once made it to the finals of the Calypso Monarch semi-finals at Skinner Park, San Fernando, while a student of the University of the West Indies, St Augustine. Pereira said Carmona was always interested in TT culture.

Pereira said of Carmona, “he is a practising Catholic and goes to four main churches — in Fyzabad, Assumption (Maraval), Siparia and St Theresa’s (Woodbrook).”

President of the Inter Religious Organisation (IRO) Brother Harrypersad Maharaj yesterday said he hoped the relationship between the new President and the IRO would continue as it has been with past presidents.

The IRO head wished “choicest blessings on him in his new position.”