Alfeo Nudas S.J.

Father Alfeo Nudas, who died on March 31st, was the only Catholic priest who has held a tenured professorship at the University of the Philippines. He taught at U.P. for 20 years.

Those 20 years were not peaceful. There are still some people who simply cannot accept the idea of a Catholic priest teaching in a state university. There were attempts to have Father Nudas dropped from the faculty. There were anonymous attacks, like the chalk marks on a wall one day which said "Father Judas go away."

And yet Father Nudas was thoroughly qualified to teach his subject. His education was of a superior quality which none of his critics could match.

His early education was in public schools: elementary grades in Naguilian, La Union, where he was born; high school in a public high school in Manila. Then he went to San José Seminary where he had two years of Latin and Greek and one year of philosophy. He entered the Jesuit novitiate when he was 20 years old.

As a Jesuit scholastic he had two more years of Latin and Greek classics and three years of philosophy. He obtained both the A.B. and the M.A. degrees cum laude.

Part of the Jesuit training is a period of teaching, three years in his time. He taught for one year at the Ateneo de San Pablo and two years at the Ateneo de Cagayan. Then he went to the United States for the 4-year course in theology at St. Mary’s Theologate in Kansas. There he was ordained priest. He also obtained the S.T.L. degree (Licenciate in Sacred Theology).

For graduate studies he went to Marquette University for a master’s degree in English and American Literature. His Ph.D. he obtained from the University of the Philippines. He then applied for a teaching post and got it.

His 20 years at U.P. were interrupted several times for special studies. One year he spent at Boston College as a Lonergan Fellow. Another year, at Campion Hall in Oxford. He also took a leave of absence for one year to write a book.

After his retirement from U.P. he taught a course in English literature to Jesuit scholastics. His students say that he was a stimulating teacher. His special predilection was for the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

While he was at U.P. he began to write a weekly column, published first in the campus newspaper Philippine Collegian, later in one of Manila daily newspapers.

Father Nudas’s last years were spent in Cagayan de Oro where he was particularly zealous in promoting a form of the Rosary that included the mysteries of Our Lord’s Public Life. Subsequently, the Pope himself made a similar proposal.

When Father Nudas was informed that he had serious lesions in the brain, he made it clear that he wanted no surgery or any kind of special or expensive treatment. He prayed for a miracle. When none happened, he accepted his condition cheerfully.

He was a man of deep humility and deep piety. Although highly educated, he remained very simple in his ways. Many people will remember him with fondness.