KHACHATUR ABOVYAN ARMENIAN STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY

Rector of Armenian State Pedagogical University, Doctor of History, Professor Ruben Mirzakhanyan has been awarded with the Pázmány Plaque, the highest award of Pázmány Péter Catholic University for his various achievements in the research of Armenian culture, visual art and contemporary Armenian history.

Péter Pázmány was a noted Hungarian philosopher, theologian, cardinal, pulpit orator, statesman and the creator of the Hungarian literary language. He was born in 1570 in the Principality of Transylvania. Being born into a Protestant family, he became a Catholic at the age of 13 and soon entered the Jesuit Order.

From 1589 to 1592, he studied philosophy at the University of Vienna, and then theology at the Collegio Romano in Rome (now the Pontifical Gregorian University). There he was ordained to the priesthood. Péter Pázmány was made a Doctor of Theology in 1597.

As a devout Catholic endowed with great outstanding oratorical talent, he encouraged the spread of Catholicism in Hungary, including in many noblest families.

His work “Guide to Truth” which was published in 1913 is said to be of great religious and political importance.

In 1616, Péter Pázmány was appointed [by the Holy See] as Archbishop of Esztergom, the Primate of Hungary. As the chief pastor of the Catholic Church in Hungary, Pázmány established a number of Catholic educational institutions.