Bethlehem University is the first university founded in the West Bank, Palestine. Bethlehem University traces its roots to 1893 when the De La Salle Christian Brothers opened schools in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Jaffa, Nazareth, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt. Bethlehem University is a Catholic Christian co-educational institution of higher learning founded in 1973 in the Lasallian tradition, open to students of all faith traditions, located in Bethlehem, West Bank. During the historic visit of Pope Paul VI to the Holy Land in 1964, Palestinian Christians expressed their desire to establish a university in the region. After consultation and study, and in the midst of the post-1967 war era which resulted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip occupied by Israel it was in 1972 that the Apostolic Delegate, Archbishop Pio Laghi, formed a committee of local community leaders and heads of schools in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, to establish an institution of higher learning which would offer a broad and practical university education in arts and sciences to meet the needs of Palestinian society.