In Hungary the constitutional change of 1990 brought the opportunity for Catholic higher education to flourish. In 1992, with the prior approval of the Holy See (Prot. N. 223/91/9 - 24 January 1992), the Hungarian Catholic Bishops' Conference established (46/1992 - 30 January 1992) the Faculty of Humanities as a new university faculty alongside the Roman Catholic Faculty of Theology in Budapest, and declared that the institution had thus become a Catholic university. It was renamed Pázmány Péter Catholic University. On October 4, 1992, Cardinal Pio Laghi, Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, opened the first academic year of the new university with a Holy Mass in the University Church in Budapest. In 1995, the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences was created, followed by the postgraduate Institute of Canon Law in 1996 and the Faculty of Information Technology and Bionics in 1998. The Congregation for Catholic Education made the University as a whole a pontifical foundation by a decision of 25 March 1999. The institution is constantly developing, with a student population of over 8,000 in the four faculties and the faculty institute.
In recent years, the range of Catholic universities has been further expanded with the Gál Ferenc University, the legal successor of the Szeged College of Theology, which is maintained by the Diocese of Szeged-Csanád, and in 2021 with the Eszterházy Károly Catholic University of Eger, the direct legal predecessor of the state university created from the development of the city's teacher training college, which is maintained by the Archdiocese of Eger.
Other elements of Catholic higher education include colleges of theology and other ecclesiastical colleges, which are located in the archbishopric and bishopric seats in Esztergom, Eger, Győr, Nyíregyháza, Pécs, Veszprém and Vác.
Catholic higher education institutions today have around 18,000 students studying from bachelor to doctoral level.