About the Faculty

The Roman Catholic Faculty of Theology of Cyril and Methodius of Comenius University started its history in autumn 1936 when the first students, priesthood candidates, entered its gates. The faculty went through several major changes throughout its history. The most important ones occurred in the 1946/1947 academic year when the faculty was taken out of the Comenius University corpus. The seminary in Bratislava was for decades the only institution for education and training of future priests in Slovakia. That was the situation till the change of the system (fall of communism) in 1990. After many years of fasting, when the number of students was limited to numerus clauses by the state power, new seminaries were established and they were hardly satisfying the demand. The faculty, of course, focused on education of priests whose numbers were well below the demand since there were many vacant parishes in Slovakia. The faculty was also offering theology studies for hundreds of lay persons who could not study theology for decades and now they wanted to satiate their hunger for knowledge.

Gradual social transformation presented new conditions to the faculty that kept adapting and responding to new challenges. Education of good and well-prepared priests will always remain the priority for faculties of theology. That mission is associated with emphasis on quality education and the formation process for full-time students of Catholic theology. At the same time we seek to respond to abundant new challenges. The centuries-old observed principles which gave rise and nurtured Western civilization have to be presented through a new language that is more comprehensible to modern people. The goal is to communicate the Christian idea of God, the world and the Church in a comprehensible way.  Ethical issues are also at stake, including those that have appeared alongside practical application of the accomplishments of biomedical research, technological progress and development of the global economic market. Theology has always had its place in the European university space. Drawing from the treasure of centuries of tradition, it seeks to offer answers that will be an invitation to a discussion of the essential existential issues of humans and their society.

ThDr. Ing. Vladimír Thurzo, PhD.