Bellarmine University will award approximately 263 degrees to new graduates at a
commencement ceremony in Knights Hall on Wednesday, December 20, at 6 p.m.
The Most Rev. Charles C. Thompson, who was
named the Archbishop of Indianapolis by Pope Francis in June, will deliver the commencement address. Thompson, who earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Bellarmine in 1983, will also receive an honorary doctoral degree.
December’s commencement will be the first graduation ceremony presided over by Dr. Susan M. Donovan, who was inaugurated as the university’s fourth president in October.
The ceremony will be broadcast live on
Bellarmine’s website and
on Facebook.
As the seventh Archbishop of Indianapolis, Thompson leads a Catholic community of 223,815 parishioners across 39 counties in central and southern Indiana, with 133 churches, 70 schools, 311 clergy and 499 sisters.
Born in Louisville in 1961, Thompson attended Moore High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Bellarmine in 1983. He earned a master of divinity degree from Saint Meinrad Seminary & School of Theology in Indiana and a graduate degree in canon law from Saint Paul University in Ottawa.
He was ordained as a priest in Louisville in 1987 and served at several local parishes, including a decade at Holy Trinity prior to his appointment as Bishop of the Diocese of Evansville, Indiana, in 2011.