Pontifical Catholic University of Peru

Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (Spanish: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, PUCP) is a private university in Lima, Peru. It was founded in 1917 with the support and approval of the Catholic church, being the oldest private institution of higher learning in the country. The Peruvian historian and politician José de la Riva-Agüero y Osma would become his main benefactor by leaving him most of his assets as an inheritance, as it was then a more religious educational institution and linked to the Catholic Church; in contrast to his alma mater and original destination of his inheritance, the National University of San Marcos, where Riva-Agüero considered that liberal ideas and atheism predominated here. In July 2012, after an apostolic visitation, begun earlier, in 2011, by Peter Erdo, Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, Hungary, the Holy See withdrew from the university the right under canon law to use the titles Catholic and Pontifical in its name. Archbishop of Lima, Juan Luis Cipriani, was the main advocate of the Vatican interests. Titles like "Catholic" and "Pontifical" are granted by the Vatican only after meeting legal requirements. In 2014 Pope Francis formed a Commission of Cardinals to find a 'final, consensual solution between the Vatican and the university, comprising Cardinal Erdo, Gérald Lacroix, archbishop of Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, and Ricardo Ezzati Andrello, archbishop of Santiago de Chile, Chile.In 2016, the Vatican restored the lost titles and determined that the archbishop of Lima would not assume the position of Chancellor of the university.