Catholic social reformers

In any Catholic country, a political option colored by Catholicism is always conceivable, even if many such countries do not produce one. Chile in the early 1960s was still very much a Catholic country – in spite of the strong secularist tradition of Radicals and left-wingers, the half million or so Chilean Protestants, or the fact that only one baptized Catholic in seven regularly attended Mass on Sundays. In Chile, politicians of Catholic background put together the reforming movement that won the presidency in 1964, and this produced the first great turning point of Chilean history since the 1930s. Chile's Christian Democrat party was the first such party to win power in Latin America. Domestically, it was to prove the strongest political party of the second half of the twentieth century.

As we have seen, there had been a traditional link between the Catholic Church and the Conservative party. The separation of Church and state in 1925 did something to lessen the old connection, but so, too, over a longer period, did changes within the Church itself. In the mid-nineteenth century, Pope Pius IX's intransigence had helped stiffen Archbishop Valdivieso's opposition to Manuel Montt. A century later the Church's changing outlook helped to turn certain Chilean Catholics in the direction of social reform.