Gilbert Luis Centina III is a poet and a member of the religious Order of St. Augustine. He is one of the leading voices in contemporary Catholic poetry following in the footsteps of another Augustinian, the sixteenth-century poet Fray Luis Ponce de León that literary critics have crowned as the Prince of Spanish Lyric Poetry.
Centina belongs to the Spanish circumscription of the Augustinian Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus of the Philippines. He is currently assigned at the Augustinian-run parish of Holy Rosary in New York.
He is the author of two books of poetry, Our Hidden Galaxette and Glass of Liquid Truths. His work has been anthologized in high school and college textbooks in the Philippines. Besides English, he also writes in Spanish and in two Philippine languages, Hiligaynon and Tagalog.
From the Asian Catholic Publishers and the Archdiocese of Manila, he received the Catholic Authors Award in 1996. He entered the Augustinian Convent in Intramuros, Manila and obtained his degrees from the University of Santo Tomas (BA classical, PhB, STB, and STL, all cum laude) and from the University of the Philippines (Master of Arts in comparative literature). He completed required units for his PhD in comparative literature from a state university in central Philippines but did not submit a thesis to be conferred the degree. Upon his ordination to the priesthood, he briefly served as a missionary in Peru.