Josep Montserrat i Torrents

Who is Josep Montserrat i Torrents?

Josep Montserrat i Torrents is a teacher, philosopher, Coptic scholar and historian. His education took place in Barcelona, Rome, Munster, Paris, and Benares. Due to his activism and writings in the Catalan Press regarding the Second Vatican Council he was censured in the newspapers from 1966 to 1977. A teacher since 1954, the government denied him the “certificate of political good behavior” due to his anti-Francoist activism, and he was thus unable to continue in that profession. He received a Ph.D. in Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1968, and a second Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Barcelona in 1977. Since 1976 he has been professor of philosophy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where he became full professor in 1996 and professor emeritus in 2002. He is the coauthor of the Manifest of Bellaterra, 1975 and secretary of the Third Catalan University Congress, April 1978. He has held positions as a visiting professor at the Catholic University in Chile, and the Venice International University, and served as Invited Study Director at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris.