During my time as President of Claremont International University an articulation agreement was formed between the University and Trinity International University for the reciprocal acceptance of credit between the two institutions. Trinity International was incorporated in Delaware, USA, but ran its degree-granting programme from France, where it was registered as a non-profit association of higher education operating through correspondence.

The methodology of awards was through the assessment of prior experience for academic credit with supplementary correspondence study. Candidates could qualify through the accumulation of academic credits including awards issued by partner institutions around the world.

My dealings with Trinity were primarily via its principal Father Cornelius Anthony Gillick. Father Gillick, an Irishman by birth, attended the universities of Dublin and Manchester before earning his doctorate in theology at Adam Smith University, where I would also study, and the President of ASU, Dr Donald Grunewald, spoke very highly to me of the quality of his academic work. In 1988 he became an Associate of the Institute of Counselling, and previously he had also been an Overseas Welfare Officer looking after the interests of overseas students in Manchester. He was also a bishop in the Independent Catholic tradition and ran a house mission as well as undertaking community work. He had also previously been a magistrate in Manchester.

Some years earlier he had self-published a guidebook to distance learning degree providers called “Degrees by Post” and generously sent me a copy of this useful book. He was devoted to the care of cats, and I understand that for some years he established a cat sanctuary that did a good deal of valuable and humane work.

I became a candidate for the Doctor of Letters degree, which was the senior earned degree awarded by the University, and received this in June 2004.