Fr. Antoninus Samy was born in Melbourne, Australia, the only child of Catholic parents who emigrated to Australia from the island of Mauritius in the late 1960s. He was raised by his parents in the Catholic faith and was educated at the University of Melbourne where he received the degrees of Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Science, majoring in economics, mathematics and statistics. After working as an economist for the Australian Bureau of Statistics for two years, he moved to England to study for his doctorate in economic history at the University of Oxford. He completed his thesis and was given a postdoctoral fellowship to continue his research and teaching. He resigned from this post after a year to enter religious life, initially by working as a Dominican volunteer in the Philippines where he ministered to the poor and the sick. “I entered the Order of Preachers because I see no more noble a life than to preach Jesus Christ for the salvation of souls, and I remain in the Order because of the joy of making Christ present to others and leading them to Him through our faithful witness to the Gospel.”