Receiving the distinction on behalf of the Order of Preachers, fr. Pablo Carlos Sicouly, OP, called the recognition of Francisco de Vitoria “singular, significant and timely,” and invited the academic community to rediscover Vitoria’s legacy in the service of truth, peace and the dignity of peoples.
SALAMANCA, SPAIN — On 5 June 2026, the University of Salamanca awarded a posthumous Doctorate honoris causa to fr. Francisco de Vitoria, OP, the Dominican friar whose teaching helped give rise to the School of Salamanca and whose thought remains central to the development of international law.
The ceremony marked the fifth centenary of Vitoria’s arrival at the prestigious Prime Chair of Theology (Cátedra de Prima) at the University of Salamanca, which he held from 1526 until his death in 1546. Fr. Pablo Carlos Sicouly, OP, Vicar of the Master of the Order, received the honorary doctorate on behalf of fr. Gerard Francisco Timoner III, OP, Master of the Order of Preachers.
Speaking in the name of the Order, fr. Sicouly said he had “the honor and joy of receiving, in his name, this honorary doctorate for the notable master fr. Francisco de Vitoria.”
“This is above all an occasion,” he said, “to express, in the name of the Order, our gratitude to the University of Salamanca for this important distinction.”
The academic celebration was preceded by a procession from the historic buildings of the university to the Dominican Convent of San Esteban, where Vitoria lived and where his tomb is located in the so-called “Pantheon of Theologians.” Rector Juan Manuel Corchado Rodríguez and fr. Sicouly laid a floral offering there before the Dominican community joined the procession back to the university’s Paraninfo.
For fr. Sicouly, the posthumous character of the doctorate, conferred five centuries after Vitoria’s teaching began at Salamanca, gives the ceremony a special meaning. He noted that the decision of the University of Salamanca deserved to be called “singular, significant and timely.”
The distinction, he explained, is not simply an act of historical memory. It also highlights “the permanent and especially current value” of Vitoria’s contribution to university life and to “the common good of society, culture and the international community.”
Fr. Sicouly presented Vitoria as the founder of the School of Salamanca, understood as “a community of professors and students” who shared a common inspiration and sought to answer the challenges of their time through a renewal of theology. This renewal involved a serious engagement with humanism, the sources of Christian thought and St. Thomas Aquinas.
From the perspective of the Order of Preachers, fr. Sicouly said, Vitoria represents “a faithful and fruitful realization of the ideal of Saint Dominic.” He described that ideal as “study at the service of the fullness of life of our neighbors, oriented toward beatitude, as an exercise of the misericordia veritatis.”
He also presented Vitoria as a model for the dialogue the Order continues to cultivate between academic life and the concrete needs of peoples. Vitoria, he said, remains a model “of dialogue between those who dedicate themselves to academic work, as he did here, and those who, on the ground, in the various places of the world, strive to promote and defend, together with the preaching of grace, the dignity and rights of persons and peoples.”
The honorary doctorate, fr. Sicouly concluded, calls all to shared responsibility. “The conferral of this doctorate by the University of Salamanca invites us all to co-responsibility in the search for truth, the common good, respect for the dignity and rights of human beings and peoples, and the commitment to peace, in a time of multiple and important challenges.”
To remember Vitoria 500 years after the beginning of his teaching in Salamanca, he said, is more than an exercise in grateful memory. It is also “an urgent and hopeful call before the challenges of the present.”
“Fr. Francisco de Vitoria has been and continues to be an authentic master,” fr. Sicouly said, “who continues to inspire and encourage us in the task of teaching, research and service to the human community.”
