Pontifical Oriental Institute founded by Benedict XV
The Pontifical Oriental Institute, also known as the Orientale, is a Catholic institution of higher education located in Rome and focusing on Eastern Christianity. 
The plan of creating a school of higher learning for Eastern Christianity had been on the agenda of the Catholic Church since at least Pope Leo XIII, but it was only realized in 1917 by Pope Benedict XV. The Orientale forms part of the consortium of the Pontifical Gregorian University (founded in 1551) and the Pontifical Biblical Institute (founded in 1909), both in Rome. All three institutions are run by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). 
While the Orientale depends on the Holy See, its management is entrusted to the Society of Jesus. Its chancellor is the Prefect of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches and its vice-chancellor is the superior general of the Society of Jesus, while the Congregation for Catholic Education is the dicastery competent for approving the academic programmes of the Orientale. Each year, another approximately 400 scholars visit the library for research purposes.The first 100 years
The Orientale was created as a twin institution to the Congregation for the Eastern Church, whose name would change in 1967 to Congregation for the Eastern Churches. Without the link to this important organ of the Holy See, it would be impossible to grasp the purpose and mission of the Orientale, nor how the Orientale could be founded in the midst of the "useless massacre" of World War I, 1917. The question to which the creation of the Orientale was meant to be the answer had been long in coming. Known as la question d’Orient, the question was first posed after the Ottoman’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the Russians in 1774 (cf. the Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainarji), becoming ever more poignant ever since Napoleon set foot in Egypt in 1798: what was to be done with the millions of Christians under the Ottomans once the Ottoman empire would disappear? The question reached its acme in the Eucharistic Congress of Jerusalem in 1893, when the Eastern Catholic Patriarchs made the grievances of their communities known to the papal legate, Cardinal Benoît Langenieux, who forwarded them to the pope. Leo XIII at once convoked an assembly of Eastern Catholic Patriarchs for the following year (1894), from which emerged the apostolic letter Orientalium dignitas, known as the Magna Charta of the rights of Eastern Catholics.
With the collapse of the Russian empire a reality after the February revolution of 1917 and the demise of the Ottoman empire in sight, the pope decided to act. With the motu proprio regarding the Eastern Congregation, Providentis Dei (1.05.1917), the pope created the Oriental Congregation; with the other motu proprio Orientis catholici(15.10.1917), he created the Orientale. The pope reserved to himself the prefecture of the new Congregation, whose head was therefore only a Secretary, although a cardinal (cfr. canon 257 of the Pio-Benedictine Codex Iuris canonici of 1917 specified precisely this). Already three years after founding the Orientale, Benedict XV granted it, through the apostolic constitution, Quod nobis in condendo, the right to confer degrees. From the start the pope insisted on the necessity of a richly supplied Eastern library to second the study and the research of the Orientale population.