Aspects of the evolution of public and private universities in Costa Rica

Abstract

In Costa Rica the University appeared in 1844 under the name of Universidad de Santo Tomás. At the request of Costa Rica Pius IX assigned him the character of Pontifical. And this, in a way, was his death sentence. For at the end of the nineteenth century anti-clerical panther liberalism, which moved from Guatemala throughout the isthmus, triggered its struggle against the Catholic Church. In Costa Rica he clashed with the pontifical character of the University, by lecture full of accents against the Church said by Mr. Lorenzo Montúfar, to whom it was called attention, and thus began the indisposition of the State against him. At last, along with another set of circumstances, began the persecution that culminated in the expulsion of Bishop Bernardo Augusto Thiel, the closure of the University of St. Thomas "for what was pontifical", the closure of the Sacred Heart College and others, especially the closure of the College of St. Louis Gonzaga – the best in Central America – the expulsion of the Jesuits and the sadly famous anti-clerical laws that were in force until 1940. The work of Monsignor Sanabria Bernardo Augusto Thiel, Second Bishop of Costa Rica, that of Mr. Hernán G. Peralta Rafael Iglesias, that of Mr. Abdulio Cordero The being of Costa Rican nationality and that of Federico G. Malavassi Calvo The freedom of teaching and the creation of the Autonomous University of Central America make known very well the arbitrariness committed by the Costa Rican State against its only University in 1888. This deprived for more than half a century Costa Rican youth of having university studies, except for the law degree that was maintained, later Pharmacy and then that of Normal Teacher with the opening of the Normal School of Costa Rica in 1914.