Happy 413th Anniversary to my Alma Mater, “The Royal and Pontifical” University of Santo Tomas (UST)!
Last Sunday, the UST community celebrated the University’s 413th founding anniversary. The University of Santo Tomas is the oldest existing university in Asia. In terms of student population, it is the largest Catholic university in the world in a single campus.
The University was founded on April 28, 1611 by Spanish friar Miguel de Benavides, the third Archbishop of Manila. With the original campus located in Intramuros, the Walled City of Manila, UST was first called Colegio de Nuestra Señora del Santisimo Rosario, and later renamed Colegio de Santo Tomas, in memory of the foremost Dominican Theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas. The continuing increase in enrolment prompted the administration in 1927 to transfer the university campus from Intramuros to its present site in Sampaloc district, which covers a total of 21.5 hectares. The Intramuros campus continued to operate until its destruction during the Second World War.
UST was granted the title “Royal” by King Charles III of Spain in 1785. On September 17, 1902, Pope Leo XIII made the University of Santo Tomas a “Pontifical University”, and by 1947, Pope Pius XII bestowed upon it the title of “The Catholic University of the Philippines”. UST is the second university in the world after the Gregorian University in Rome to be granted the formal title of Pontifical University.
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