What are the odds? That in the same breath of history-give or take a few weeks-Kingston College should celebrate its 100th year while the Roman Catholic Church elects its first pope from the Order of St. Augustine? One might be forgiven for wondering if this is divine choreography or simply a well-timed cosmic joke with impeccable theological overtones.

On hearing the news that the newly elected pope was from the Order of St. Augustine (Augustinians), my mind leapt, instinctively, to the cruciform sanctuary at the heart of North Street-St. Augustine's Chapel at Kingston College. I was struck by the symmetry, and frankly, the symbolism. Curious, I dusted off my copy of Anthony Johnson's History of Kingston College -an indispensable work for anyone wishing to understand the soul of KC-and reread the sections in which Johnson reflects on the influence of St. Augustine on Bishop Percival Gibson. In those pages, the connections began to shimmer into view.

In April 1925, when the young Percival William Gibson founded Kingston College, he wasn't setting out merely to start a school. He was, rather audaciously, attempting to reshape the very ministry of the Anglican Church in Jamaica. Having declined the post of Rector at All Saints' Church in West Kingston the year before, Gibson revealed he was intent on developing "a different kind of ministry". And in seeking inspiration for this different kind of ecclesiastical service, he looked not to Canterbury or Lambeth, but further back and further south-to Hippo Regius in North Africa (the modern city of Annaba in Algeria), and to the towering figure of St. Augustine.

What might Gibson have seen in the life and legacy of Augustine?

Perhaps it was that Augustine, though destined for greatness, had been won over to the Church by the prayers and patient endurance of his mother, St. Monica. Gibson, too, was deeply devoted to his mother, crediting her sacrifice and love as the cornerstone of his own success.

Or perhaps it was Augustine's unquenchable intellectual curiosity-a man who dabbled in all fields of knowledge and arrived at the view that all true learning ultimately led back to God. This, too, mirrored Gibson's beliefs. It's no surprise that one of his favourite hymns, which generations of KC boys have come to revere, was Almighty, Invisible, God Only Wise-a hymn that exalts the divine as the source of all wisdom, both seen and unseen.

There was also biography. Augustine, a North African, mastered a culture ruled by Imperial Rome. Gibson, of African descent, carved his place in a society dominated by the legacies of Imperial Britain. Both men made use of classical education not to mimic empire, but to transcend it. And both were beneficiaries of generous patronage-Augustine educated in Carthage through the support of a wealthy benefactor named Romanianus; Gibson, likewise, lifted by timely support that made his own education possible.

Fast forward to May 8, 2025. As twilight descended over Rome, the 133 cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church elected Robert Prevost-Chicago-born, deeply learned, and committed servant of the poor-as Pope Leo XIV. A son of the Augustinian Order, he reminded the crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square of his spiritual lineage, anchoring his papacy to the same philosophical and theological tradition that had inspired Bishop Gibson a century earlier in Jamaica.

It is a coincidence both poetic and providential.

For those who have passed through the gates of Kingston College, and who have paused at St. Augustine's Chapel-that cruciform sanctuary at the centre of the school's spiritual life-this moment invites reflection. The Chapel was no mere accessory to the campus; it was Gibson's pulpit, his anchor, his City of God. Named deliberately after Augustine, it embodies an Augustinian ideal: that man is always choosing between two cities, the civitas Dei and the civitas terrena-the City of God and the Earthly City. And that the purpose of education, properly ordered, is to cultivate citizens for the former.

Augustine, writing in the long shadow of Rome's collapse, imagined these two cities not as places on a map but as orientations of the soul. The City of Man, he warned, would seduce us with pride, power, and impermanence. But the City of God called its citizens to humility, to reason, to truth-and to community, across languages, nations, and even species. It is no accident that Gibson, channelling this vision, insisted that every KC boy attend morning and evening worship, or that he filled the school with hymns like Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise and The Church's One Foundation .

One can't help but be struck by the parallels. Augustine wrote The City of God in the aftermath of Rome's sacking by the Goths in 410 AD. He was responding to a civilizational crisis-a society confused and blaming Christianity for the collapse of its power. That he offered a theology of history in return was an act of both faith and philosophical courage. In our own day, as Kingston College marks its centenary and the Roman Church embraces an Augustinian pope, the world around us seems similarly unsettled. In America, Donald Trump and his most ardent supporters appear determined to dismantle the moral and institutional architecture of a democratic republic. If Augustine lived to see the fall of Rome, we may be watching the attempted rebranding of its sequel.

And yet, Augustine might tell us that this is precisely when we need to choose-not despair. The cities are still before us. The question is the same: Which one are we building?

And let us not overlook the delightful quirks of Augustine himself-philosopher of mice and men, of beetles and bees, of kingdoms and creeping things. He saw divine purpose not only in empires and angels, but in locusts, fleas, and newts. One can imagine Gibson, with a wry smile, quoting Augustine to a chapel full of schoolboys who'd rather be elsewhere: "The place occupied by the Earth-so tiny".

But this is precisely the point. In Augustine's vision, no space is too small, no creature too lowly, no boy too young to be summoned to purpose.

The ascension of Pope Leo XIV, a bridge across the Americas and a man of the same Augustinian spirit, offers us an opportunity to revisit these ideas afresh. In an age once again tottering between triumph and turmoil, it is worth asking: what kind of city are we building? And how, in our classrooms, chapels, and communities, do we form citizens fit for the City of God?

Kingston College answered that question a century ago with a purple flame lit on North Street. That it still burns today, in a world Augustine might barely recognize, is testament to the power of an idea whose time never really passes.

So here's to 2025: the year of Kingston College, the year of Pope Leo XIV, and perhaps-if we're paying attention-a year for rediscovering the wisdom of the North African bishop who taught us that true greatness lies not in dominion, but in devotion.

Long live the City of God. Long live Kingston College. Fortis forever!