Aristotle C. Dy

Fr. Aristotle C. Dy, SJ, Ph.D. is the 6th School President of Xavier School and the 2nd alumnus to hold the position. Fr. Aristotle Dy was elected School President, by the school’s Board of Trustees, for a term of three years effective 01 April 2013. A renowned academician, he began his career in the academe as a Conversational Mandarin High School Teacher in Sacred Heart School (Ateneo de Cebu), Cebu City for two years before serving for eight years in the Ateneo de Manila University as a Lecturer and Officer-in-Charge of the Chinese Studies Program, as Associate Director of the Confucius Institute and as Associate Director and Director of the Ricardo Leong Center for Chinese Studies.

Fr. Dy is from the Xavier School Class of 1989 and graduated as a Xavier Awardee. He earned a BS Management-Honors degree at the Ateneo de Manila University, before entering the Society of Jesus in 1993. After priestly ordination in 2004, he became Director of Jesuit Communications. From 2004-2008, he also served as the National Secretary for the CBCP Chinese-Filipino Apostolate. At present, the Chairs the Chinese-Filipino Apostolate cluster for the Philippine Province of the Society of Jesus.

Fr. Dy is the author and editor of numerous publications. Some of the books he authored include Weaving A Dream, Reflections for Chinese-Filipino Catholics Today (2000), and Building a Bridge, Catholic Christianity Meets Chinese-Filipino Culture (2005). He was editor of With New Eyes, The World as Seen by Preachers of the Word (2001), Spirit of the Place, An Anthology to Mark the 70th Anniversary of Sacred Heart Novitiate (2002), Chinese Filipinos 华菲 (2003), Sundays for Skeptics, The Homilies (2003), and The Pilgrim and the Sage (2019)

In 2008, Fr. Dy left Manila to pursue special studies in Chinese Buddhism. On top of his Master of Arts degrees in Philosophy and Theological Studies from the Ateneo de Manila University, he also has a Masters in Buddhist Studies from the University of Hong Kong and was awarded the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Study of Religions, for his dissertation on Chinese Buddhism in the Philippines, by the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies in July 2013.

In 2017, he attended the Jesuit Tertianship Program run by the Jesuit Conference of Asia-Pacific from September 2017 to February 2018. Tertianship, meaning “third,” is the final stage of Jesuit formation.