universities Pázmány Péter Catholic University is a private university of the Catholic Church in Hungary, recognized by the State. Founded in the 17th century, the PPKE is one of Hungary's oldest and most prestigious institutions of higher education. The university has five faculties and two institutes. The Faculty of Theology is the oldest of these, founded back in 1635. The Faculty of Humanities was founded in 1992 by the Hungarian Catholic Bishops' Conference, with the assent of the Holy See. The National Assembly of Hungary registered the university as a state-recognized university of the Catholic Church in 1993. The Faculty of Law and Political Sciences was established in 1995 and the Faculty of Information Technology has been functioning since 2001. Its two other institutes are the Postgraduate Institute of Canon Law and Collegium Hungaricum (the latter in Leuven, Belgium). The Faculty of Theology is the legal successor of the Faculty of Theology of the university founded by the archbishop Péter Pázmány in Nagyszombat, the Kingdom of Hungary (today Trnava) in 1635.