Martin Daubney, Chancellor of Australian Catholic University.

The Honourable Martin Daubney AM was installed as Australian Catholic University's fifth Chancellor at an installation mass at St Stephen's Cathedral in Brisbane on Friday 11 February.

Martin Daubney was a student at Downlands College in the 1970s, spent two pre-novitiate years at Sacred Heart Monastery, Croydon, and them embarked on studies that led to his distinguished legal career.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge, president of ACU Corporation, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Brisbane Archbishop, was the principal celebrant and delivered the homily.

Members of the Daubney family, representatives of ACU’s founding orders, members of the Church and clergy, former ACU chancellors and vice-chancellors, former and present ACU staff and students, ambassadors, members of federal and state government, vice-chancellors and higher education colleagues, industry partners, and members of the Queensland judiciary were among those who attended the Mass of celebration.

Mr Daubney pledged an “unequivocal affirmation of the Catholic intellectual tradition which informs our academic pursuits, the fundamental Christian conceptions of truth and love which shape our actions and aspirations, and the essentially Catholic mission to which we are committed at ACU”.

In an address to the congregation, Mr Daubney outlined such commitments to the mission as “practical and ethical groundings for all we do and all to which we aspire at ACU”.

“They provide essential paradigms within which our students may deploy their learnings. They inform our approach to research and provide a principled foundation for our academic culture. In short, our mission is at the heart of everything we do and define our vocation as an Australian Catholic university.”