Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR SÍOFRA PIERSE, HEAD OF SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES, CULTURES AND LINGUISTICS on 20 October 2022, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa on MARCELO REBELO DE SOUSA.
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A Uachtaráin, a Chláiritheoir, a chomhleacaithe, a Aíonna uaisle, a cháirde;
President, Registrar, Colleagues, Distinguished guests, Friends;
Presidente, Secretário, Colegas, Distintos Convidados, Amigos.
Fáilte is fiche romhaibh anseo inniú; you are most welcome here today;todos vocês são muito bem-vindos aqui hoje.
The Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws which University College Dublin bestows today on Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, President of Portugal, is in recognition of his exceptional achievement in building the modern democratic Portuguese state. It is a great honour to have the President of Portugal here in person at this special ceremony to accept his honorary degree, as UCD adds its own tribute to the many accolades that the President has received over a long and influential career.
In 1984, as a brilliant student, Rebelo de Sousa earned his PhD in Law from the University of Lisbon, where he was rapidly appointed as the youngest ever Full Professor in Law. He later became Full Professor at the Portuguese Catholic University and Invited Professor at the New University of Lisbon
However, the President has impacted his country in many realms far beyond that of much revered lecturer, academic and intellectual. His achievements stretch across a wide range of spheres, from law through academia, politics through journalism and from the social sector to broadcasting.
As President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa embodies the modern Portuguese state to which he has dedicated so much of his career and his energy as an esteemed constitutional expert, as indefatigable nation builder, as key political player and as illustrious statesman. To enumerate just a few examples from a prestigious career of public service: in the Constitutional Assembly of 1975-76, the President became key legal advisor and political player for an assembly which laid the core foundations of the modern Portuguese Republic. In the 1970s, he was involved in founding and directing the Portuguese national best-selling weekly newspaper, Expresso. He has held multiple high-profile political positions, including as President of the Partido Social Democrata (Social Democratic Party) and as Vice-President of the European People’s Party. As Professor at the University of Lisbon, he created fellowship amongst students, one of whom, by happy coincidence, is present with us today as current Ambassador of Portugal to Ireland, Ambassador Bernardo de Lucena. Like Irish President Michael D. Higgins, President Rebelo de Sousa was elected President of Portugal not once, but twice, first in 2016, and then re-elected in 2021. He, too, is held in high esteem and enjoys widespread public affection. As President, he has overseen the promulgation of a number of progressive laws enacted by the Portuguese Parliament and has championed the growth of sustainable development practices. As well-known journalist and political commentator, Rebelo de Sousa broadcast for many years on primetime national television —on Sundays after the news— to an immense public audience. On that programme, political friends and foes alike tuned in to see how they might fare that week under his astute, razor-sharp eye. Each Sunday, as if he were grading his university student’s essays, he gave politicians grades out of 20 for their performance in the previous week, noting whether they were doing reasonably well, just passably, or failing, while he pointed out areas where maybe they needed to work just that little bit harder.
The Republics of Portugal and Ireland are strong political allies who share deep historical and existential links across time. Our two countries have strong trade links since the 15th century, when wool, beef and wine sailed the seas between us. Portugal offered sanctuary to the Irish during the Cromwellian period and in subsequent centuries. 2022 marks the 360th anniversary of the death of one of Portugal’s remarkable diplomatic strategists, Irish-born Daniel Dominic O’Daly. His biographer, the late Dr Margaret MacCurtain, from UCD’s School of History, noted in her 2017 biography of him that O’Daly’s educational foundation of Bom Sucesso in Belém, outside Lisbon, particularly facilitated the education of Irish women in Portugal from the 16th century onwards and thus occupies a key space in the history of Irish emigration to Europe.
President Rebelo de Sousa is an avid reader and a literary connoisseur, who is known to enjoy the works of Irish author James Joyce - for whom University College Dublin is the alma mater. In this centenary year of Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses, we note a core motif that unites two great 20th-century contemporaries, Portuguese poet and writer Fernando Pessoa and Irish author James Joyce. In their writings, both authors consistently evoke the sea, geographical peripheries, fish, fishermen and the Atlantic, while teasing out all too familiar concepts of conflicted bilingualism, of darkness, of homeland, of diaspora, of migration and of exile.
James Joyce’s Ulysses famously begins in a Martello tower in Sandycove on the coast of Dublin, perched on the liminal edge of Ireland, with one foot metaphorically in the sea, while Anna Livia Plurabelle, the central character of Finnegan’s Wake, is the river hurtling through Dublin, embodying what Joyce calls “cityful passing” in her seaward rush. That same consciousness of liminal living, perched on a coast, with the pull and potential of our coastal waters, is the very first image conjured up by Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa in his poem Mensagem, or Message. Pessoa’s lyrics evoke a familiar western aspect, in this case facing the Atlantic:
A Europa jaz, posta nos cotovellos […]
Fita, com ohlar sphyngico e fatal,
O Occidente, futuro do passado.
Europe is lying propped upon her elbows […]
She stares, her gaze doom-laden, sphingical,
Out at the West, the future of the past.
The Irish and the Portuguese are water-staring peoples who now enjoy future-staring, modern pluricultural states. Imbued with this positive creative spirit, President Rebelo de Sousa has stood for decades at the heart of economic, demographic, social, territorial and political changes in Portugal. For his exceptional achievement in building the modern democratic Portuguese state, it is an honour for UCD to bestow on the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the degree of Doctor of Laws.
Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad gradum Doctoratus utroque Jure, tam Civili quam Canonico; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.