Abstract
The goals of this chapter are: (a) to explore the process of religious transformations due to modernization in a specific context, Argentina from World War II to the election of Jorge Bergoglio as pope; (b) to identify some features of the ‘transformed’ Catholicism, meaning the lived religion of Argentinean Catholics; and (c) to speculate how this specific background may affect Francis tenure at the Vatican. In the particular context of Latin America, many Catholic believers (laypersons, ministries, and bishops) in different countries became involved in the processes of social transformation and even fostered revolutionary movements. Argentine Catholics’ positions toward their country’s social changes were shaped by their political context as well as by the transformation of religious identity. I will highlight here some events that I see as thresholds crossed in a direction that is unlikely to be changed. These transformations of Argentinean Catholicism may provide an interpretative framework for Francis’ tenure as head of the Catholic Church.
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Notes
- 1.
The encyclical of Paul VI (March 26, 1967) affirmed that the development of the poorest peoples was a concern of the Church (#1) and that people who have political freedom need economic freedom as well. Only then will they achieve freedom from misery and human development (#6, 14). The pPope affirmed that the Church did not want to remain on the margins of the initiatives that sought a more humane world (#13). The document, which recalled the limits of private property (#23), established that in the case of evident and prolonged tyranny, revolutionary insurrection was justified (#31).
- 2.
The conference was hold in September 1968 in that Colombian city. For that reason the final document is known as ‘Medellin’. In that declaration, the Church’s leaders acknowledge that the social injustice the Latin American peoples were suffering was actually ‘institutional violence’. ‘The misery that besets large masses of human beings in all of our countries (…) as a collective fact, expresses itself as injustice which cries to the heavens’ (Justice #1). The bishops stated that the institutional violence was caused by inequality, imperialism, and dependence (Peace #4, 8, 9). Those who benefited from the situation ‘characterize as subversive activities all attempts to change the social system which favors the permanence of their privileges.’ (Peace #5). According to the leaders gathered at the meeting, ‘this situation demands all-embracing, courageous, urgent and profoundly renovating transformations. We should not be surprised therefore, that the ‘temptation to violence’ is surfacing in Latin America. One should not abuse the patience of a people that for years has borne a situation that would not be acceptable to anyone with any degree of awareness of human rights’ (Peace #16). http://www.celam.org/conferencia_medellin.php.
- 3.
The magazine, founded by Juan Garcia Elorrio and Casiana Ahumada, was published from September 1966 to September 1971. They published, at irregular intervals, 30 regular issues and three special ones (referred to here as ‘suplemento’). They distributed about 5000 copies of each issue. Several factors contributed to its importance: first, its reach (Catholic groups from all over Argentina were able to network, and young people thus discovered people with similar interests in other parts of the country); second, its ideological role (the theology supported by the magazine helped radicalize these groups to such an extent as to advocate that a true Christian should turn to arms to achieve revolutionary triumph. The question ‘Can a Christian be revolutionary?’ became ‘A true Catholic must be revolutionary’); and finally its role in the formation of the ‘Comando Camilo Torres,’ a proto-Montoneros insurgency that in less than two years became the ‘Montoneros’ (Gil 2004; Morello 2012).
- 4.
The ‘Montoneros’ made their first public appearance announcing they had murdered former president General Pedro Aramburu, and closed the statement with the sentence ‘May God have mercy on his soul’. Twenty years later, when they formally surrendered their weapons to the government in 1989, they did so after a mass in front of the image of Our Lady of Lujan, the national patroness of Argentina.
- 5.
More progressive Catholic sectors share a similar idea. They thought that the ‘people’ wereCatholic, and because of that any ‘non-Catholic ideal’ was ‘eEnlightened’ and ‘elitist’ and therefore ‘anti-popular’ (Donatello 2008).
- 6.
Martha Pelloni (born in Buenos Aires in 1941; member of the Theresian Missionaries Carmelites Congregation) was the principal of a high school in the state of Catamarca in Argentina’s Northwest in 1990. In September of that year, a student at Our Lady of the Carmen and St Joseph school, Maria Soledad Morales, was killed. Everyone in the small town was sure that the political elite was involved (as it was). Witnessing the procrastination of justice in solving the crime, Sister Pelloni organized ‘Silence Walks’ criticizing the political complicity in the killing of the teenager. After a year the central government sent a Federal intervention to Catamarca.
- 7.
Jaime de Nevares (1915–1995) was a Salesian priest who became bishop of Neuquén, a dioceses in Argentinean Patagonia. He attended the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), supported a workers’ strike in the ‘El Chocón’ dump (1968–1969), helped Chilean political refugees in the early 1970s, and became a fierce advocate for human rights during the last military dictatorship. He was a member of the Argentinean Truth commission (CONADEP) in 1984 and was elected as a member of the Congress to Reform the National Constitution in 1994.
- 8.
Luis Farinello (born in Buenos Aires in 1937) is a ‘committed’ parish priest in the diocese of Quilmes, on the southern outskirts of the city of Buenos Aires. He was a member of the Movimiento de los Sacerdotes del Tercer Mundo, a well-known group of Argentinean ‘committed’ priests in the early 1970s. Due to his public criticism of the military dictatorship and his engagement in social justice issues in the 1990s, many political parties were interested in having him as a candidate for Congress. He founded his own political party and ran for State Congress (Buenos Aires province) in 2001.
- 9.
Such as the prayers Cordoba’s bishop José Nañez offered at the State House in July 2011, or at a theater in July 2008. (http://aica.org/aica/documentos_files/Obispos_Argentinos/Nanez/mar_obispo_Nanez_mail.htm) accessed in June 11, 2014.
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Morello SJ, G. (2017). Transformations in Argentinean Catholicism, from the Second Half of the Twentieth Century to Pope Francis. In: Mapril, J., Blanes, R., Giumbelli, E., Wilson, E. (eds) Secularisms in a Postsecular Age?. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43726-2_11
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