RASSL’s 175th Anniversary Memorial Lecture on Fr. Vito Perniola SJ
View(s):Ever since the Italian-born Fr. Vito Perniola SJ set foot in Sri Lanka in 1936, he involved himself with the people, languages and history of the country. He served as a teacher and subsequently Rector of St. Aloysius’ College, Galle.
After joining the newly established Aquinas College in 1954, Fr. Perniola was assigned to teach Pali for the Bachelor’s degree programme affiliated with the University of London. Realising the lack of a Pali grammar book, Fr. Perniola compiled a textbook on the subject for his students in 1958.
Many years later, recognising the diligent work of the author, the Pali Text Society of Oxford re-published this work as an official Pali grammar textbook.
Fr. Perniola served as the Provincial of the Jesuits in Sri Lanka during the mid-1970s. Realising that nobody had continued the venture of publishing original documents related to the Catholic Church of Sri Lanka during the Dutch period after Fr. S.G. Perera’s early work, he ventured on a project that ended in his 97th year. Though he planned only to write of the Dutch period, the documents collected from the Vatican, Rome, Lisbon, Netherlands, Goa as well as Sri Lanka, gave him the idea to publish documents of the Portuguese, Dutch and British periods. This series consisted of not less than 19 volumes.
Fr. Perniola was conferred the Medal by the Royal Asiatic Society in 2013, just a few weeks before his 100th birthday. He continued his writings until he passed away in 2016 at the age of 103.
The Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka’s 175th Anniversary Memorial Lecture will be on ‘80 Years in Sri Lanka: The Life and Works of Fr. Vito Perniola SJ’. It will be delivered by researcher Avishka Mario Senewiratne on Monday, May 13 at 5 p.m. at the Council Room of the RASSL,No 96, Mahaweli Centre (first floor),Ananda Coomaraswamy Mawatha, Colombo 7.
Zoom meeting: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83929644963?pwd=oCserz35ZIFxzuzNf5pE35e0dBmAaW.1 Meeting ID: 839 2964 4963 Passcode: 670820 YouTube Live: https://youtube.com/live/PnO1hDhvGpY?feature=share
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