Catholic Church in Latin America

Pope Alexander VI, in the papal bull Inter caetera, awarded colonial rights over most of the newly discovered lands to Spain and Portugal.

On December 1511, the Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos openly rebuked the Spanish authorities governing Hispaniola for their mistreatment of the American natives, telling them "... you are in mortal sin ... for the cruelty and tyranny you use in dealing with these innocent people".

[12] Francisco de Vitoria, an acclaimed Theology Professor of the colonial era, opposed the idea of the Amerindians being “forcibly converted” to Catholicism on the premise that they would not truly accept the religion.

[15] Although the missionaries focused on the “conversion,” the friars also worked to educate the Amerindians about Spanish cultural expectations, social customs, and about “political organization through the mission system.

[16] In the letter, he argued that the Amerindians' workload under the Spanish colonists did not allow them to properly “provide for their families and the opportunity to become good Christians.

[26] Junípero Serra, the Franciscan priest in charge of this effort, founded a series of missions which became important economic, political, and religious institutions.

However, by bringing Western civilization to the area, these missions and the Spanish government have been held responsible for wiping out nearly a third of the native population, primarily through disease.

[29] In a challenge to Spanish and Portuguese policy, Pope Gregory XVI, began to appoint his own candidates as bishops in the colonies, condemned slavery and the slave trade in the 1839 papal bull In supremo apostolatus, and approved the ordination of native clergy in the face of government racism.

He argued that the Spanish colonists’ should avoid continuing to make harsh labor demands of Amerindians by noting how the native people did “not even have time to look after their subsistence” and would “die of hunger.”[34] Bartolome de Las Casas, another famed Dominican friar, also defended the Amerindians' rights and opposed the Spaniards’ view of the indigenous people as “barbarians” as an acceptable justification to massacre the indigenous population.

[36] Jesuit missions in Latin America were very controversial in Europe, especially in Spain and Portugal where they were seen as interfering with the proper colonial enterprises of the royal governments.

Together throughout South America but especially in present-day Brazil and Paraguay they formed Christian Native American city-states, called "reductions" (Spanish Reducciones, Portuguese Reduções).

It is partly because the Jesuits, such as Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, protected the natives (whom certain Spanish and Portuguese colonizers wanted to enslave) that the Society of Jesus was suppressed.

The reductions were created by the Catholic order of the Jesuits in South America, in areas inhabited by the Tupi-Guarani peoples, which generally corresponds to modern day Paraguay.

[37] Under the Jesuit leadership of the Indians through native "puppet" caciques, the reductions achieved a high degree of autonomy within the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires.

[38] The Jesuit reductions present a controversial chapter of the evangelisational history of the Americas, and are variously described as jungle utopias or as theocratic regimes of terror.

In Cuba, the Virgin named Caridad del Cobre was allegedly seen in the beginning of the 16th century, a case consigned in the Archivo General de Indias.

For most of the history of post-colonial Latin America, religious rights have been regularly violated, and even now, tensions and conflict in the area of religion remain.

Moreover, it has taken Latin America much longer than other parts of the West to adopt religious freedom in theory and in practice, and the habit of respect for those rights is only gradually being developed.

This anti-clericalism was based on the idea that the clergy (especially the prelates who ran the administrative offices of the Church) were hindering social progress in areas such as public education and economic development.

Registry of births, marriages and deaths became a civil affair, with President Benito Juárez registering his newly born son in Veracruz.

The government had hoped that this law would bring in enough revenue to secure a loan from the United States but sales would prove disappointing from the time it was passed all the way to the early 20th century.

As promised in the diplomatic resolution, the laws considered offensive to the Cristeros remained on the books, but no organized federal attempts to enforce them were put into action.

Although Colombia enacted anticlerical legislation and its enforcement during more than three decades (1849–84), it soon restored “full liberty and independence from the civil power” to the Catholic Church.

[59][60] Across the country, militants attacked churches, convents, and monasteries, killing priests and looking for arms, since a conspiracy theory maintained that the religious had guns, and this despite the fact that not a single serviceable weapon was located in the raids.

In 1954, Perón reversed the fortunes of the church by threatening total disestablishment and retracting critical functions, including the teaching of religious education in public schools.

As a result, Argentina saw extensive destruction of churches, denunciations of clergy and confiscation of Catholic schools as Perón attempted to extend state control over national institutions.

Cuba, under atheist Fidel Castro, succeeded in reducing the Church's ability to work by deporting the archbishop and 150 Spanish priests, discriminating against Catholics in public life and education and refusing to accept them as members of the Communist Party.

The Peruvian priest, Gustavo Gutiérrez, became its primary proponent[64] and, in 1979, the bishops' conference in Mexico officially declared the Latin American Church's "preferential option for the poor".

[65] Archbishop Óscar Romero, a supporter of the movement, became the region's most famous contemporary martyr in 1980, when he was murdered while saying mass by forces allied with the government.

[68] While Pope John Paul II was criticized for his severity in dealing with proponents of the movement, he maintained that the Church, in its efforts to champion the poor, should not do so by resorting to violence or partisan politics.