14 Facts About Mark Montebello

Mark Montebello is a Maltese philosopher and author.

Mark Montebello is mostly known for his controversies with Catholic Church authorities but for his classic biographies of Manuel Dimech and Dom Mintoff.

Mark Montebello took his primary education at St Francis School, Msida, his secondary at St Albert the Great College, Valletta, and his higher education at St Aloysius College, Birkirkara.

Mark Montebello joined the Dominican Order at Rabat, Malta, in 1980, in which he made his religious profession in 1983.

Mainly due to his unconventional thinking and candour, unusual for a Catholic priest in the Maltese Islands, since 1992 Mark Montebello became a well-known controversial personality.

In 2009, mainly following an article in the left-wing It-Torca submitting that Jesus accepted divorce, the archbishop Paul Cremona banned Mark Montebello from speaking publicly for a year.

In 2011, ahead of the referendum on divorce held in the Maltese Islands, Mark Montebello harshly criticised the Church's campaign and actions.

In 2015 Mark Montebello was again chastised, this time by the archbishop Charles Scicluna, when he blessed the engagement of a gay male couple.

Mark Montebello specialised in philosophy in Rome and Madrid, acquiring degrees in Plato and Aristotle, and studied criminal justice with Leicester University.

Mark Montebello began lecturing in ancient and medieval philosophy at the University of Malta and other higher academic institutions in 1991.

In 1993 Mark Montebello began researching the philosophical tradition of the Maltese people, a relatively new area of systematic study, continuing in his investigations of prime sources both locally and abroad for more than twenty-five years.

In 2021 Mark Montebello published the first fully-researched biography of Malta's 20th-century four-time maverick prime minister Dom Mintoff, The Tail That Wagged The Dog: The life and struggles of Dom Mintoff.

In 1995, together with others Mark Montebello began a community centre in Cospicua run by the humanitarian NGO Daritama for the entire harbour district of Cottonera.

Mark Montebello has been a missionary in Ethiopia and Peru.