The new Statutes are made up of 96 articles and are divided into General Statutes and Academic Regulations. They constitute the fundamental texts that define the identity of the Salesian Pontifical University (UPS) and contain the lines of conduct and action that guide the Institution in the fulfillment of its specific mission of study and research, of teaching and formation, and of ecclesial service and social.
The first Statutes of our Institution, then Pontifical Salesian Athenaeum (PAS), were approved on 12 June 1940. They were then renewed, the first time as a Salesian Pontifical University, in the early 1980s according to the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Sapientia christiana, approved by Congregation for Catholic Education on 30 December 1981 and promulgated by the Grand Chancellor Don Egidio Viganò with a Decree on 8 December 1982.
After the erection of the Faculty of the Sciences of Social Communication and the introduction of some changes, the General Statutes and those of the Faculties were approved by a letter from the Congregation for Catholic Education on 23 December 1999 and promulgated by the Grand Chancellor Don Juan Edmundo Vecchi on 1 January 2000.
During the last twenty years, numerous partial and specific interventions have been carried out on the statutory texts to adapt the reality of the University in its various components to the new challenges and to the updating and development of the educational and cultural service offered by UPS, in fidelity to the ecclesial magisterium, to the charismatic inspiration and to the pastoral and educational tradition of the Salesian Congregation.
Following the publication on 8 December 2017 of Pope Francis' Apostolic Constitution Veritatis gaudium, UPS had undertaken a process of revision and adaptation of its Statutes in view of the "renewal of ecclesiastical studies at every level, as part of the new phase of the Church’s mission, marked by witness to the joy born of encountering Jesus and proclaiming his Gospel"(VG 1) and in the perspective of dialogue with history and society, opening itself more and more to innovation, interculturality, and academic and interinstitutional collaboration.
On 8 December 2019, the Statutes and the Academic Regulations were presented to the attention of the Congregation for Catholic Education by the Grand Chancellor, Fr Ángel Fernández Artime, and on 10 March the Congregation for Catholic Education approved them ad experimentum for five years.
On 24 May 2020, the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, on the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary Help of Christians, the Grand Chancellor Fr Ángel Fernández Artime, Rector Major of the Salesian Society of St John Bosco and Grand Chancellor of the Salesian Pontifical University, promulgated it with immediate effect.