More than 300 people, including students, faculty, staff and outside community members, filled the Saint Mary’s College Chapel in Moraga, Calif. April 24 to honor Christian Brother Alvaro Rodriguez Echeverria during the annual Convocation Mass of De La Salle Week, which also marked the university's 150th anniversary.

Echeverria, superior general of the Christian Brothers in Rome, delivered an address on the societal benefits of empowering the poor through globalization in education. He also received an honorary doctoral degree at the event.

Echeverria said:

“Humanism and science need to walk together throughout the university process, enriching one another and seeking solutions to the great human problems. It seems important to me to point out that globalization is not only a phenomenon of market integration but of knowledge. Tomorrow's dilemma will not be between the haves and the have-nots but rather between those who know and those who do not. As you understand very well, the key to the future is education …”

 “I would like to invite you to live by looking forward, certainly not forgetting your roots and the lived experience of these 150 years, in order to imagine new ways to respond to today's problems, by being creators in your initiatives and by offering new roads, stimulating and alternative initiatives capable of giving meaning to the lives of those who remain outside of the benefits of globalization that we have today.”

Read the full speech here.

“The Convocation is the centerpiece of a week-long celebration of the life of St. John Baptist de La Salle, patron saint of teachers and founder of the Christian Brothers, and of the college's 150 years of Lasallian heritage and mission,” a press release from the university said.