Dear colleagues, members of faculty and research staff, students and professional staff of Universidade Católica Portuguesa,
In this season illuminated by the hope of Christmas, I write to our entire academic community with deep gratitude and appreciation. Throughout the past year, the skill, rigour and dedication with which each of you has carried out your work has enabled UCP to continue affirming itself as a place of excellence, human dignity and social responsibility.
The international recognition earned by our researchers and academics — with an increase of twenty per cent in the top 2% of the world’s most influential researchers — stands as a clear testament to this distinction. I therefore extend my sincere thanks to every member of our community for your contribution to scholarship, to the integral education of our students, and to our shared service to the common good.
During 2025 we also strengthened Católica’s commitment to social impact and sustainability, expressed through initiatives such as Sustainability Week, which deepened our collective awareness of the transformative role the University is called to play, both nationally and globally.
Looking to the near future, 2026 will mark a decisive moment in the life of the University with the start of construction of the new Campus Veritati. This project will open new possibilities for growth and renewal, while inviting us to embrace the courage required to do things differently. The curricular transformation now underway — UCP New Generation — calls us to think and act boldly, creatively and, at times, disruptively. We count on everyone: on the commitment of our academic staff, on the professionalism of our colleagues across all services, and, above all, on the capacity of our students to think beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries, engaging with the world with curiosity, imagination and critical discernment.
We are, however, living through a global moment marked by conflict, polarisation and profound uncertainty. It has become ever more urgent to promote peace not only as an aspiration but as a daily practice: a peace that is active and intentional, grounded in concrete gestures of dialogue, understanding and reconciliation. Consensus, far from signaling weakness, is — as our Christian tradition reminds us — an act of courage.
Pope Leo XIV’s apostolic letter Drawing New Maps of Hope reminds us that an education inspired by Catholic humanism is always a work of communion between professors and students. Education is, by its nature, a process of co-creation: no one is educated in isolation. Our model is one rooted in intellectual rigour, moral responsibility and an unwavering commitment to the dignity of the human person. And as we face the realities of our age, we are reminded that education cannot exist apart from the shared life of our society. At this moment in history, Pope Leo urges us to educate for a “disarmed and disarming peace,” free from polarising rhetoric and capable of generating true encounter.
May this Christmas, therefore, be a Christmas of peace — inner peace for each member of our community, social peace for those facing economic or personal hardship, and peace within our University, that it may continue to be a place of dialogue, hope and the shaping of a better future.
With sincere thanks, and warm wishes for a peaceful Christmas and a hopeful year ahead,
The President,
Isabel Capeloa Gil
