In the nineteenth century and for most of the twentieth, Catholics and Protestants between them claimed the allegiance of the vast majority of the population in Argentina. Most Argentinians have been Catholics, but a strong minority was formed by churches that drew on the ideas and principles of the Lutheran, Calvinist and Anglican reformations. The great religious mutation of the last quarter of the twentieth century was effected by numerous and rapidly growing Pentecostal churches. Their culture of glossolalia; healing; pastoral practice of proximity; a theology of individual, family and community strengthening; a literal reading of the Bible; and a call to the Spirit has captured the imagination of many.

Along with these new forms of Christianity, the Catholic Church stands out and is distinguished not only as a hierarchical religious movement but also as the non-state social organisation with the greatest historical presence in Argentina. It finds expression through its culture, its symbols in the public and state space, its memories, its influence in the public and private spheres, and its network of parishes, sanctuaries, schools, movements, community radios, soup kitchens, non-governmental organisations and non-social services. Not only are these influential throughout the whole country; they also mould and reconfigure – until today – the rest of the religious actors. The Catholic liturgy permeates and reproduces itself in civics and politics. Concepts, ideas, imagery, scenery, aesthetics, visions of the Christian Catholic world are resignified in political parties and social movements. They are a source that contributed and continues to contribute, militantly, in the arenas of civil society, political life and the institution of the state.

Turning to the historical background, we can identify three great religious-historical periods: a first one of the constitution of a ‘modern’ state in the nineteenth century, with influences of liberalism and liberal Catholicism and Protestantism; a second from the mid-twentieth century until the end of the civic-military dictatorships in 1983, when the ‘Catholic Argentina’ emerged, massively nucleating the sons and daughters of migrants who, at the same time as they were nationalised and became citizens, also became Catholicised; and a third, that of the ‘new democratisation’ born at the end of the twentieth century and that has continued to the present day, where the defence and expansion of human rights faces neoliberal economic, financial and religious projects from the basis of a new and broad Christian and cultural diversity.