‘The role of the University and its contribution to society’ marks the opening ceremony of the academic year 24-25

‘The University implies the structural formation of the person, but also the contribution to the improvement of society and the planet’. These were the words of the President of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Isabel Capeloa Gil, at the Opening Session of the New Academic Year 2024-2025, held on 18 October at the Cardeal Medeiros auditorium in Lisbon.

At an event that brought together the academic community to celebrate the new graduates and welcome the new students, Isabel Capeloa Gil said that ‘in order to be a university in the true sense of the term, the institution must understand itself as a space for exploration, an eternal project and a work that is always unfinished.’

And as an ongoing project, the University must be ‘unavoidably centred on promoting people's dignity through teaching, research and the transfer of knowledge’, she said.

Isabel Capeloa Gil also left a word of congratulations to the Faculty of Biotechnology, which is celebrating 40 years "of innovation in favour of an area that did not exist in Portugal in 1984 when the School was founded, and which UCP is extremely proud to have initiated and led". She thanked the career teachers, who received the Medals of Merit for the first time for 25 and 40 years of service, for "the generosity with which they have contributed and continue to contribute to the success story that Católica is".

Miguel Freitas, an alumnus of the Faculty of Biotechnology, who was invited back to his alma mater to speak to and inspire the new students and recent graduates, recalled that ‘the Universidade Católica has always encouraged me to question routine and look for creative solutions to daily challenges’.

‘The excellence of the teaching staff and the dynamic teaching, very focused on practice and the development of teamwork projects, were fundamental to my training,’ added the Vice President of Scientific Affairs at Danone in New York.

On this occasion, Luís Bandeira from CGD also presented the UCP/Caixa Geral de Depósitos Awards to the students with the best grades in each degree programme.

Also present at the ceremony was Aníbal Cavaco Silva, who presented the Democracy and Development Prize, which he established in 1995, to two students from the Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics. On this occasion, he expressed his enormous pride in the university where he has taught, emphasising that ‘like many Portuguese, he sees Católica as a tree that produces good fruit’.

The Patriarch of Lisbon and Chancellor of the Universidade Católica, D. Rui Valério, closed the ceremony with words of hope for the entire academic community, emphasising the ‘importance of the vocational legacy that the Universidade Católica Portuguesa has in its highest values and standards of Christian humanism’. ‘The university is a workshop of hope and also a laboratory of humanity,’ he concluded on a note of hope for the academic community.