Universidade Católica Portuguesa

Founded in 1967, the UCP is the fourth university created in Portugal, and has established itself over the years for the quality of its teaching, the rigor of its training, the prestige of its teachers, and the important leaders it has trained, who are renowned not only in Portugal but also abroad. Attended by 19,000 students, 25% of whom are foreigners, it also trains about 8,000 business executives annually in executive training courses. Since 2018, it is considered the #1 Portuguese university in the WUR – Times Higher Education ranking. It is the only non-state university member of the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities.

Throughout the country, in four regional centers (Lisbon, Porto, Braga and Viseu), it participates in the University of Saint Joseph in Macau, and in the International and European Federations of Catholic Universities. Since 2018, its Rector is the President of the International Federation of Catholic Universities.

Rector’s Message

The university, a driver of growth and development, is also the bulwark of a way of life as a community, congregating values and rights. The profound ideas that anchor Europeanness, if you will, were developed and learned in the throbbing spaces of the academies: the defense of the dignity of the individual, the fight for freedom and free choice, the establishment of a legal order based on the rule of law, representative democracy as a political system, the welfare state, the right to memory, to education, to health, to work, the right to have rights. The university combines the pulsing desire for knowledge with ethical activism in favor of an integral citizenship.

The Portuguese Catholic University is a comprehensive university with a global vocation, focused on the development of knowledge for the common good. Over the past 55 years, the Portuguese Catholic University has developed a teaching and research strategy marked by high standards and international ballast, inspired by the tradition of Catholic universities. The strength of a university can be seen in the quality of its alumni. Among those who have graduated from UCP are Nobel Prize winners, prominent business and political leaders, renowned scientists, Church luminaries, artists, and social entrepreneurs. Their global impact represents the quality of education provided at UCP, and the inspiration of their alma mater in developing creative and innovative value-based professional solutions. The education that the future needs is not limited to technical robustness, but will be a global training project leveraged by the will to use science not as an end in itself, but as a tool to improve and dignify human life, the planet and a world that is rich because of its diversity. This is the purpose for which we exist and strive.

Ph. D. Isabel Capeloa Gil