A law passed in 2010 closed private institutions that delivered degrees in education, including the Normal Superior Catholic Institute Sedes Sapientiae
by Massimo Introvigne
The Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Bolivia is before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, to which it denounced the Bolivian government having exhausted all domestic remedies through which it asked that the Normal Superior Catholic Institute Sedes Sapientiae, closed on the basis of a law passed in 2010, should be re-opened.
Sedes Sapientiae is a prestigious institution whose alumni include distinguished teachers of what is today called in Bolivia “Spiritual Values and Religion,” but also of History, Languages, and Mathematics. Some served in political capacities.
In 2010, a Bolivian law granted to the state a monopoly on the formation of teachers. As a consequence, private institutions were gradually closed, including the Catholic Sedes Sapientiae and a parallel Adventist college.
The Catholic Bishops said they are now “tired” of requesting the reopening of Sedes Sapientiae to the authorities of the Ministry of Education. They had to turn to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to denounce the violation of the rights to freedom of education and freedom of religion.
“We have made several requests to the Ministry of Education for the reopening of the school, the Bishops said, based on the fact that we as a Church should have the possibility and the right to train our educators, our teachers.” The Bishops now believe that the IACHR will recognize that both the right to religious liberty and to freedom of education have been violated.
The question at issue is whether states are entitled to create monopolies in certain fields of higher education that exclude private academic institutions, including those inspired by specific religious values.
