The Grand Chancellor of the San Dámaso Ecclesiastical University, Cardinal José Cobo Cano, Archbishop of Madrid, having heard the opinion of the Governing Board of the University and having received confirmation from the Dicastery for Culture and Education, has appointed Professor Nicolás Álvarez de las Asturias, currently Vice-Rector for Academic Organization, as the new Rector for the four years 2024-2028.

The new Rector – who replaces Professor Javier María Prades López – will take office on September 3, 2024.

Professor Nicolás Álvarez de las Asturias, professor of History of Canon Law at the Faculty of Canon Law of the San Dámaso Ecclesiastical University, was born in 1972 and has been a priest of the Archdiocese of Madrid since 1999. The new rector holds a doctorate in Canon Law from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross and a degree in Theology from the Pontifical University of Comillas. Author of numerous contributions and articles in specialized journals on issues of the history of canon law, he is a visiting professor of his discipline at various canon law centers, a member of the board of directors of the Spanish Association of Canonists and of the Consocitatio Internationalis Iuris Canonici Promovendo, as well as an ad casum consultant to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.

The Academic Community thanks Professor Javier María Prades López for his years as Rector, which have coincided with the beginning and first development of our Institution. Throughout his three terms at the head of our University, the four Faculties and the Higher Institute of Religious Sciences have been consolidated in their face-to-face and distance sections. In addition, through successive Strategic Plans, the Statutes have been adapted to the Veritatis Gaudium constitution, the General Regulations and the specific Regulations of the different academic centres have been approved, and economic and financial measures have been activated to guarantee sustainability. In recent years, there has also been a greater push for research, through the creation and financing of interdisciplinary projects.