Argentine Catholic University. Educational institution of higher education, it is one of the largest and most prestigious private universities in Argentina and is the main educational center in the country.
History
The university was founded in Argentina, and in the Catholic milieu, the need for a confessional university began to be talked about insistently during the second half of the 19th century, when the opposition to secularism that characterized this entire period was defined.
The idea of the creation of the University appears first in the Eucharistic Congress of the year 1884. In that Assembly, held in the same year as the sanction of Law 1420, a resolution was passed in favor of freedom of education in secondary and higher education. In addition, hopes were made for the foundation of a Catholic University, invested with the power to confer academic degrees in the various faculties, in which Catholic doctrine would be taught in all its integrity.
When, at the end of that decade, the Catholics resumed the interrupted movement, the same yearning was expressed again with enthusiasm. In the Assemblies of 1907 (Buenos Aires) and 1908 (Córdoba) the subject of freedom of education occupies a preferential place. The first Congress of the Catholic Youth of 1908, points out the importance of the integral formation of the youth and insists that the resolutions that the Episcopate had adopted since 1902 be carried out in the sense of founding the Catholic University “in which to youth for the exercise of liberal professions and that Catholic doctrine be taught in all its integrity.
Finally the initiative is fulfilled in 1910 by decision of the Argentine Episcopate, which founded the Catholic University of Buenos Aires. This first University had been conceived exclusively for the purpose of providing its students, within a Catholic formation and a general culture, with the capacity required for the exercise of certain professions. Since there was no organic law at that time to protect private universities, and in accordance with the constitutional precepts that recognize the right to teach and learn, the bishops believed that the lack of it was not a reason to defer the foundation of a university.
The Pbro. Luis Duprat was appointed Rector and the Superior Council, for its part, was made up of Drs. Joaquín Cullen, Emilio Lamarca and Angel Pizarro among others. The second and last Rector –there were only two- was Bishop Miguel De Andrea. Only two years after its foundation did its only Faculty, Law, begin to function. The study plans of this Faculty were organized according to the plans of the official University and year after year, it completed up to six, the entire table of required disciplines to which the compulsory courses of Philosophy and History were added, destined to integrate the training of students.
However, the life of this first Catholic University was short-lived: as its degrees were not recognized by the State, it closed its doors in 1922. All the efforts made to save the crisis that hit the brand new University at that time were useless. But the experience nevertheless left a great lesson, it revealed the possibility of constituting a teaching body and an adequate structure.