Chilean Conservatives and the Catholic Church, 1857-1901

Lisa Edwards

In nineteenth-century Latin American politics, Conservative politicians were strongly associated with the defense of the Roman Catholic Church in an era when Liberals were aggressively pursuing the secularization of the public realm. This association was a strong one in Chile. The Conservative Party was explicitly established in response to a Church-State controversy in 1857 and was known as the defender of the Church until its dissolution in the mid-twentieth century. Although the relationship was clearly an important one to party leaders and adherents, scholars have tended to take it as a given and to assume that the defense of the Church was always the party’s most important priority. They have failed to carefully examined the nature and extent of the party’s ongoing commitment to the Church and how it changed over time, particularly in the early history of the party.

This paper evaluates the Chilean Conservative Party’s commitment to preserving the Catholic Church’s influence on social behavior and morality through public policy between the party’s foundation in 1857 and the turn of the century. Examining manifestos by party leaders, party programs, and congressional debates, it provides a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the Conservative Party’s defense of the Church in this period. The paper focuses on Congressional debates over the reform of Article 5 of the Constitution of 1833 (which established Roman Catholicism as the state religion), ongoing debates over the freedom of education, and the secularization of civil registries and cemeteries. It finds that in an era when liberals were attempting to restrict the role of the Catholic Church exclusively to the spiritual realm, Conservatives used the argument of pursuing liberty as a reason to protect the Church’s current privileges and even expand them.