Del Rosario honored by Cory Aquino’s New York school

Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario has been conferred an honorary law degree by a college in New York, just like President Aquino and his mother, the late President Corazon Aquino, before him.

Del Rosario on Friday was conferred a doctor of laws degree (honoris causa) by the College of Mount Saint Vincent, a Catholic liberal arts college in Riverdale, New York, the same academic institution that gave recognition to the two Aquinos and where Cory Aquino studied Mathematics and French in the early 1950s.

Del Rosario shared the honor with his colleagues.

“I consider the honor bestowed upon me today as recognition also for the hardworking men and women of the Philippine foreign service who are part of the department that never sleeps,” he said at the convocation ceremony attended by The Mount’s trustees, faculty and students, along with Department of Foreign Affairs officials and the secretary’s family.

Del Rosario took the opportunity to raise pressing issues in Philippine foreign affairs, including the alliance between the Philippines and the United States and the maritime dispute in the South China Sea that is in arbitration in a United Nations-attached tribunal.

“The Philippines believes the final outcome of this arbitration process will contribute to the long-term resolution of overlapping maritime claims or entitlements in the region,” Del Rosario said, referring to China’s claiming the waters and islands near the Philippines in the South China Sea or West Philippine Sea.

Founded in 1847 by the Sisters of Charity as the first institution to offer higher learning for women in New York, the Academy of Mount Saint Vincent’s charter was amended in 1911 to become the College of Mount Saint Vincent, which in 1974 became coed.

President Corazon Aquino was conferred in 1984 an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, and in 1986, she received The Mount’s highest honor, The Elizabeth Seton Medal, as Asia’s icon of democracy and the “embodiment of this institution’s highest ideals.”

Her son, President Aquino, received The Elizabeth Seton Medal in 2010.

Del Rosario recounted that 50 years ago, he and his wife Gretchen spent the early years of their married life in a neighborhood a short walk from The Mount campus.