Peru's Pontifical University gets new Vatican deadline

Lima, Peru, Apr 17, 2012 / 15:06 pm

The Pontifical Catholic University of Peru has reportedly been given a final deadline of April 18 to comply with the Vatican's demand that it bring its statutes in line with Church teaching.

“According to church sources, this deadline is not extendable,” the Riva Aguero University Association, a group of students, teachers and alumni from the school, said April 16.

The Vatican had previously given the school until April 8 – later extending the deadline to April 13 upon the university's request – to comply, which marked the first time the Holy See has set such a deadline for a school to reform.

University officials have been refusing to accept the Church’s guidelines for Catholic universities, which were laid out the papal document “Ex Corde Ecclesiae.” The apostolic constitution was promulgated in 1990 by Pope John Paul II to clarify what is expected of an authentically Catholic university.

An investigation of the university was carried out Dec. 5 -11, 2011 by Cardinal Peter Erdo of Budapest, who found the Lima-based institution to be at odds with the Catholic Church in several significant areas of policy.

In an unrelated dispute, the school has pitted itself against the Archdiocese of Lima involving the wishes of Jose de la Riva-Aguero, a Catholic patron who donated the land where the university was built.

Riva-Aguero had stipulated in his will that the land would belong to the university as long as a representative of the Church was allowed a seat on its board of directors. The university had defied a ruling by the Peruvian civil courts to give the Archdiocese of Lima a seat on its board of directors.

The association warned that a failure to comply with the Vatican “would mean the unexpected end of the institutional life of a Catholic educational center that has enjoyed national and international prestige for 95 years.”

“We call on the university community – especially students – to stay informed and to be ready to accept the effects that a refusal of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru’s to reform its statutes would have on their university life,” the group said.