The presence of Christianity in Uruguay began prior to its establishment as an independent country in 1830. As in the rest of the continent, the first manifestations occurred through the processes of conquest and colonisation, to which immigration later was added. Under the Constitution of 18 July 1830, Catholicism was the official religion of the new state. From that moment on, the prerogatives (such as appointing church officials and managing church funds) of the Patronato, later called the Patronato Nacional, were the object of state administration. In this framework of relations with the Catholic Church, the cordial ties between the two sets of institutions did not last more than 30 years.

Church and State

Conflicts between church and state began in the 1860s. The secular impulse led by the state deepened when the country began to ‘breathe in’ a liberal and positivist atmosphere, which was joined by the entry of atheists, socialists and Freemasons to the legislative body, as well as to certain government positions within the state, among which some presidents stood out. This new scenario led the Catholic Church to start a ‘salvific’ campaign in defence of its interests and public spaces, setting up strong debates between the opposing parties.

During the laicisation process, an attempt was made to take away from the Catholic religion the authority that had hitherto covered all aspects of life and replace it with a new secular morality. It was also the objective of the governments, especially those of José Batlle y Ordóñez (1903–7 and 1911–15), to separate it from the spaces it traditionally occupied. The church, for its part, alluding to the confessional character that the state maintained, tried to defend its place as a moralising agent of society.

On 1 March 1919, the second Constitution came into effect and established the separation of church and state. From then on, Uruguayan Catholicism assumed the task of reorganising and strengthening it. During the decade of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, the new ecclesiastical authorities and the militant laity carried out intense work that kept them visible and in competition with other forces, no longer exclusively the liberals, but also the socialists and anarchists among others.