The Pope, the Poor, and the Role of Religion in Argentina’s Public Sphere

• Author: S.J. Gustavo Morello
• Date: 01 November 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19879410
• Published date: 01 November 2021
• Subject Matter: Other Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X19879410

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 241, Vol. 48 No. 6, November 2021, 179–193

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19879410

© 2019 Latin American Perspectives

179

The Pope, the Poor, and the Role of Religion in

Argentina’s Public Sphere

by

Gustavo Morello, S.J.

Pope Francis’s public statements about and criticisms of the global economic system

and local politics present an opportunity to explore how ordinary people react to the

presence of a religious voice in the public sphere. Data on people’s perceptions of the

pope’s interventions collected from semistructured nonrandom interviews with 41

low-income Argentines of various religious orientations reveal that they identified and

regulated the boundaries of religion in the public sphere with different criteria from

those that secularists would expect. Respondents assumed that religion and politics

shared the space of power and therefore accepted the pope as a political actor. However,

they considered it legitimate for him to intervene only when he stood for the poor, pro-

moted human brotherhood, and exemplified God’s love. Religion was welcome where

modernity had failed.

Las declaraciones públicas del Papa Francisco y las críticas al sistema económico global

y la política local presentan una oportunidad para explorar cómo la gente común reacciona

ante la presencia de una voz religiosa en la esfera pública. Los datos sobre las percepciones

de las personas sobre las intervenciones del Papa recopiladas de entrevistas semiestructu-

radas no aleatorias con 41 argentinos de bajos ingresos de diversas orientaciones religiosas

revelan que identificaron y regularon los límites de la religión en la esfera pública con

criterios diferentes de los que los laicistas esperarían. Los encuestados asumieron que la

religión y la política compartían el espacio de poder y, por lo tanto, aceptaron al Papa como

actor político. Sin embargo, consideraron legítimo para él intervenir solo cuando defendió

a los pobres, promovió la hermandad humana y ejemplificó el amor de Dios. La religión era

bienvenida donde la modernidad había fallado.

Keywords: Latin America, Modernity, Secularization, Politics, Catholics

Gustavo Morello, S.J., is an associate professor of sociology at Boston College and the author

of The Catholic Church and Argentina’s Dirty War (2015). He works on the religious transforma-

tion of Latin America and on the relations between Catholics and politics in Latin America’s

recent history. This work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation (Grant No. 58079).

The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect

the views of the John Templeton Foundation. The research project is called “The Transformation

of Lived Religion in Urban Latin America: A Study of Contemporary Latin Americans’

Experience of the Transcendent.” Its principal investigators are Gustavo Morello (Boston

College), Nestor Da Costa (Universidad Católica del Uruguay), Catalina Romero (Pontificia

Universidad Católica del Perú), and Hugo Rabbia (Universidad Católica de Córdoba).

Veronique Gauthier and Rolando Perez (PUCP), Camila Brusoni and Valentina Pereira (UCU),

and Lucas Gatica and David Avilés Aguirre (UCC) were research assistants, and the project

manager was Caliesha Comley (BC). Ashley Lajoie (BC sociology major) collaborated in

retrieving and reviewing the literature for this paper; her help was made possible by Boston

College’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship program.

879410LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X19879410Latin American PerspectivesMorello / Religion In Argentina’s Public Sphere

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