Sapientia School of Theology

As early as the end of 1999, the new college was granted the official acknowledgement by the Holy See. In fact, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life itself urged with the instruction Inter-institute Collaboration for Formation of 1999 to merge those Colleges of Theology which have only a small number of students. So the Congregation received with great joy the news of the coming into being of the Sapientia Theological College. Along with the Congregation for Catholic Education, in the October of 1999 the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life accepted the new college's statutes and officially acknowledged the new institution. As regards the State recognition, in the meantime the Ministry of Education worked out the directives of the reforms of higher education. Its first principle was the integration of the universities. In Hungary there were a larger number of higher educational institutions but with fewer students than in the more developed European countries. The government provided financial support for this integration process from a loan received from the World Bank. In 1998 the new government moved this process a big step further. By the beginning of 1999 a network of the institutions of higher education of Hungary was built up: according to the new regulation, from January 1st, 2000 there were to be seventeen universities and thirteen colleges run by the State.