The Stephanus Prize is a cultural award jointly established by the St Stephen’s Society and the Stephanus Foundation, and presented at the opening of the St Stephen’s Book Week in the literary and theological categories. The prize is awarded to authors who convey the values of universal Christian-European culture in their works published in Hungarian.  

In 2025, in the literature category, the Stephanus Prize was awarded to Balázs Mihály Mezei, a professor at Corvinus University of Budapest, philosopher, literary scholar, and philosopher of religion. The award was presented in Budapest by Cardinal Péter Erdő, Primate and Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, patron of the Szent István Társulat (St. Stephen Society), and Bishop Antal Spányi of Székesfehérvár, president of the Stephanus Foundation. 

In his laudation, László Gájer, theologian and head of the department, said: Balázs Mihály Mezei is a full member of the Szent István Academy of Sciences, a doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, President of the Hungarian Society for the Study of Religions from 2016 to 2022, a member of the Scientific Council of the Eötvös Loránd Research Network, and head of the Hungarian and English editions of the Hungarian Encyclopaedia of Philosophy and of the research group of the Hungarian Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.  

He wrote his doctoral thesis on Edmund Husserl between 1990 and 1993. His postdoctoral thesis was on religious studies. He was awarded a Grand Doctorate of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2006. For two decades, he was the head of philosophy education at Pázmány Péter Catholic University, where he built up philosophy education from the lowest level to the doctoral school. 

He is currently a research professor at Corvinus University of Budapest. He has been a visiting lecturer at several leading universities around the world and twice a Fulbright scholar. He has published 58 books, translated and edited by himself, and more than 250 studies in Hungarian, English, German and French on various topics of philosophy.  

Balázs Mihály Mezei, thanking for the recognition, recalled that from his youth he considered thinking about God to be his main task. He added that with the right help from above, people are becoming clearer and clearer about the importance of this mysterious reality, and they understand better and better the lines of Mihály Babits’ poem from the Book of Jonah: “the worse the depths to which your servant falls, the clearer your face becomes“.  

This year, in the theology category, the Stephanus Prize was awarded to Attila Puskás, a Roman Catholic priest, theologian, and professor and head of the Department of Dogmatics at the Faculty of Theology of Pázmány Péter Catholic University. 

Congratulations on the recognition.