The Problem of the Plaza: Religious Freedom, Disestablishment and the Catholic Church in Latin America’s Public Square

Abstract

The privileged place that the Catholic Church has held in Latin America since colonial times continues to permeate the region’s countries today. This chapter examines the complex problem of the political presence of the Catholic Church in Latin American democracies. It locates this presence in the formation of nation states in the nineteenth century and in the many processes of democratization in the twentieth century. The author then engages with modes of disestablishment in Latin American countries, and the intimate link between the constitutional rights of freedom of religion and the relationship between the state and the Catholic Church. The chapter concludes by framing the church’s presence in the Latin American public square as a problem of the institutional power of the church, linked to contentious histories rather than to universal formulations of the right of freedom of religion.