The son of Oscar and Mary née Calamatta, Peter Serracino Inglott was born in Valletta on 26th April 1936. His uncle was the lexicographer and author Erin Serracino Inglott (1904–83).

 

He studied at the Lyceum and at the age of 15 he was admitted to the University of Malta, which was to remain his base for the rest of his life. He graduated B.A. in 1955. As a Rhodes scholar, he studied philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford in the UK, where he was awarded the Chancellor's Prize for English Prose and graduated in 1958. He studied theology in Paris at the Institut Catholique where he graduated B.D. cum laude in 1960. He furthered his studies in philosophy at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano where graduated Ph.D in 1963 with a thesis on Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. He was ordained priest in Milan by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini (soon to become Pope Paul VI).

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Father Peter, as he was generally known, returned to Malta and started teaching philosophy at the University of Malta. He became Professor of Philosophy and in 1971 he was appointed Head of Department, later Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and then Rector of the University between 1987–88 and 1991–96. He was UNESCO Fellow at the Open University, Chairman of the Commonwealth Science Council, Co-Founder of the Commonwealth Partnership for Technology Management and Chairman of the Malta Council for Science and Technology. Together with Salvino Busuttil, in 1974 he founded the European Documentation Centre in Valletta, later the Institute for European Studies.

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In 1987 he was appointed chairman of the Mediterrean Institute at the University of Malta, and in 2001 he became chairman of the International Institute for Baroque Studies, also at the same university. In 1996, at the age of sixty he retired as Rector of the University of Malta and Head of the Department of Philosophy, however he continued to lecture at the University and remained very active in his many other commitments right until the final months of his life.

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He was Visiting Professor at the University of Paris II (Sorbonne–Pantheon) and the University of Ottawa, Guest Lecturer at the Universities of Cincinnati, Milan (Cattolica), Venice (Ca' Foscari), Palermo and Bruges (College of Europe). He was conferred honorary doctorates by Brunel University in the UK, Luther College in Iowa, the University of Malta, and the International Maritime Law Institute of the International Maritime Organisation. He received various honours, Kumpann of the Ordni tal-Mertu (Malta), Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur (France), Cavaliere di Gran Croce of the Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana (Italy), and the Cross of Merit (Portugal).​

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Rev. Prof. Peter Serracino Inglott was a great champion of Malta's 1967 proposal to declare ocean-space as Common Heritage of Mankind, in aid of which he developed both philosophical and political frameworks to underpin the management of the common heritage and the rights of future generations. He served as advisor to the Prime Minister of Malta, Eddie Fenech Adami, and as representative of the Maltese government at the Convention on the Future of Europe.

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His published works include Beginning Philosophy, Peopled Silence, and (with Charles Camilleri) The Creative Use of Noise and Mediterranean Music, and Adeodata Pisani: A Mystic Nun in Mdina, as well as over 150 contributions to books and journals on a variety of subjects. He edited, translated and wrote poetry, wrote four opera librettos, and contributed to the journal Arte Cristiana over four decades. For several years he was a columnist for The Sunday Times of Malta until he stopped writing for health reasons in 2011.

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Throughout his years as a scholar and public intellectual, Fr Peter was active as a priest. He served the Church in multiple ways, from spiritual advisor to people from all walks of life and of all creeds, to chaplain of Malta's Young Christian Workers, to a member of the 'Committee of the Wise' of the Commission of the Bishops of the European Community. 

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