Pontifical university in Peru caught in dispute over its control

Published: 2007-04-12

LIMA, Peru (CNS) -- The Pontifical Catholic University of Peru has been caught up in a legal dispute over who controls it. The university, widely accepted as the leading academic institution in Lima, has built a reputation of liberalism and activism for human rights. It is built on property bequeathed by Jose de la Riva Aguero, a historian and intellectual who died in 1944. The head of the Lima Archdiocese, currently Cardinal Juan Cipriani Thorne, has the honorary title of university chancellor, and the Peruvian bishops' conference designates five members of the university's governing assembly. However, Riva left several different wills with different instructions about how his legacy was to be controlled. The current dispute was triggered by the university's sale of land in February to a Catholic high school that had rented the sold plot for about 20 years. Walter Munoz Cho, administrative board representative from the Archdiocese of Lima, sent letters to the university rector objecting to the sale and demanding the right to audit the university's finances. University officials saw Munoz's demands as an effort to control the university, and they went to court to block his efforts.

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