The Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology offers our warmest congratulations to Sr. Carla Thomas, OP, on being named the 2025 recipient of the Governor General’s Award. The award is presented annually to the doctoral student with the highest academic standing.
Sr. Carla was to receive her medal at the inaugural convocation for the Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology, held Saturday, Nov. 8, at 2 p.m. in St. Basil’s Church.
“It is incredible,” says the Guyanese-born Sister, who belongs to the Congregation of Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena of Étrépagny in Trinidad and Tobago. “I feel immensely grateful.”
Long interested in adult faith formation, Sr. Carla enrolled in the St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology in 2017 to work on a Master of Theological Studies (MTS) degree to further her knowledge, a move she notes was fostered, encouraged and organized by her congregation.
“All credit goes to my congregation,” she says, adding that the general prioress at that time, Sr. Therese Antoine, and other sisters found St. Michael’s appealing for a variety of reasons, ranging from a Dominican presence at St. Michael’s, and in the city, to the Catholic ethos underpinning the faculty.
Once enrolled, Sr. Carla was encouraged by the supportive, dynamic community she found. She also appreciated the ecumenical approach she discovered on campus, including the presence of the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies (MASI), as well as the opportunities to take courses at all the other member colleges of the Toronto School of Theology along with the courses offered at St. Michael’s.
As her MTS studies were wrapping up, Sr. Carla discerned a desire to further deepen her knowledge and was encouraged to enrol in a doctoral program. Inspired by her own ministry contexts and the need she felt for her research to connect with the works of her religious congregation, she pursued a thesis examining Pope Francis’s contributions to family life in contexts marked by colonial histories. Her dissertation set out to propose recommendations of themes and orientations for a regional pastoral strategy aimed at accompanying the various kinds of families present in the Anglophone Caribbean. She points out that while family life is a pressing concern for the global church, the legacy of colonialism has long complicated the Church’s ministry in the region on this issue. This dissertation takes its place in the trajectory of studies by other scholars from the Caribbean who have wrestled with this subject. However, in scope and ecumenical attentiveness, it seems to be the first of its kind from a Roman Catholic perspective.
Sr. Carla undertook this research because she is mindful of the people she has encountered in her ministry who give endlessly of their time and talents to the Church but also face many challenges with church norms and teachings about family.
“I wanted my dissertation to reflect how theology impacts people,” she says.
Now finished her studies, she hopes to continue the work she has been doing with the Regional Seminary of St. John Vianney and the Uganda Martyrs in Trinidad and Tobago, work she had been engaged in for the final two years of her studies.
She was also selected recently to participate in the 2025-2026 cohort of an international panel of women religious theologians, an initiative of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG), where she will use her theological training to examine challenges and opportunities that will loom large for consecrated life and the Church in the future.
As she reflects on her time in Toronto, Sr. Carla calls on a phrase coined by Dominican theologian Timothy Radcliffe to describe her experience.
“There is an ‘ecology of flourishing’” she says of life at Regis St. Michael’s. At RSM she found an eco-system of relationships, community and concern for the wider creation which enriched her studies.
“Sr. Carla has been a wonderful addition to life and learning of Regis St. Michael’s. An insightful and inspiring person, we are grateful she selected RSM for her doctoral work because our community has been enriched by her presence. We are confident she will go on to do important work in service to the Church, the academy and her community,” says RSM Dean Jaroslav Skira.
Sr. Carla expresses great thanks to her supervisor, Prof Michael Attridge, committee members Prof. Darren Dias, OP, and Sr. Susan Wood, SCL, her external examiners, various faculty and staff; her friends and colleagues in the doctoral program at RSM; her family, her community, the Dominican friars and her parish in Toronto, Our Lady of Good Counsel Caribbean Canadian Catholic Church.
And, of course, “I feel immense gratitude to God, and to God’s mercy.”
Her dissertation, she says, represents the fruits of contemplation, discovered both in prayer and in hard work in the library.
“I have a sense of gratitude and fulfillment,” she says, adding that she is keen to share her work with Caribbean theologians as well as people here in Toronto.
