--- title: Uruguay's secular path: how a Catholic minority shaped a church outside Christendom url: https://www.faithfulnews.com/en/uruguays-secular-path-how-a-catholic-minority-shaped-a-church-outside-christendom published: 2026-11-13T15:48:53+00:00 language: en section: World Church source: https://www.religiondigital.org/opinion/papa-uruguay-buscar-oveja-perdida-historia-barroco-ateismo-bidegain_1_1472674.html organizations: Holy See publisher: FaithfulNews --- # Uruguay's secular path: how a Catholic minority shaped a church outside Christendom A viral video shows a priest celebrating the visit of Pope Leo XIV to Uruguay, invoking the biblical image of the lost sheep to describe the country's exceptional secular character. The priest, Juan Andres "Gordo" Verde, notes that Catholics make up only 38% of the population while the non-religious account for 41%, in a continent where Catholicism has long been the majority. The country's secular character has historical roots. The author argues that Uruguay is a child of the Enlightenment rather than the Baroque that shaped popular religiosity across Latin America. What is now Uruguay was seen as land of little value by the Iberian empires, yet it was also a site of intense geopolitical dispute. Colonization and evangelization therefore came late, just as Enlightenment ideas were reshaping imperial power. Portuguese settlers founded Colonia del Santisimo Sacramento on the northern bank of the Rio de la Plata in 1680, nearly opposite Buenos Aires. Spanish settlers founded Montevideo almost half a century later, in 1726. The late presence, combined with an absence of precious minerals and a small population, produced only incipient evangelization. By then, Enlightenment proposals in both empires sought to place everything under state reason and control of the Church, including its economic power. From its beginnings, the church in what is now Uruguay was poor and had little clergy. Religious orders never held the vast lands granted by the Spanish crown elsewhere, nor the wealth of the convents of other colonial cities. The independence struggle forged an egalitarian common sense marked by Artiguist ideas and imbued with Franciscan ethics, which proposed the continent's first agrarian reform in the 1815 land regulation. That regulation established that the most unfortunate would be the most privileged. It was complemented by the democratic spirit of the 1813 instructions, in which the independence leader proclaimed that his authority emanated from the people and ceased with their citizen presence. The Pope cited this in his first speech on arriving in Montevideo before political authorities and citizens, not to make memory but to formulate a pastoral message on preserving and deepening the democracy recovered forty years earlier. After independence, the territory remained disputed. Between 1820 and 1825 it lived again under Portuguese and then Brazilian rule, until independence was consolidated with the 1830 constitution, with British imperial intervention, but the Artiguist ideals were sacrificed. The first president, F. Rivera, and his nephew Bernabe are remembered for the massacre at Salsipuedes. Rivera had gathered some forty caciques to discuss recognition of land ownership granted by Artigas, but it was a ruse in which they were killed and those who escaped were pursued. This prompted the flight of populations that had received lands, such as the Charrus and other nations living there before the Iberians arrived, out of the emerging Uruguay. Between this genocide and the arrival of several migratory waves during the nineteenth century, the whitening of Uruguay was facilitated when positivist proposals became state policy. Demographic changes were accompanied by a bold educational reform that established public, free, secular and compulsory schooling from 1876. A basic primary education controlled by the state, by its compulsory nature, instilled the values of liberal modernity in all Uruguayans and homogenized the population. Facing the reaction of Catholic sectors, non-obligatory religion classes continued at first and then were definitively dropped when a 1909 law prohibited religious teaching. In 1879 the Civil Registry was established and in 1885 compulsory civil marriage. At the start of the century, several measures deepened secularization, such as the removal of religious images from public hospitals in 1906 and the divorce law in 1907. Thus the 1917 constitution that established the secular state was preceded by many measures that fostered the secularization of Uruguayan society and culture. The church separated from the state had to reorganize. It freed itself from the Republican Patronate, which placed many obstacles to its missionary work. The Holy See could freely appoint new bishops, and thanks to the reaction of Catholics, the church preserved ownership of all buildings for worship. In the land of little value, millions of cattle and sheep grazed, allowing a great expansion of exports that financed that modern, benefactor, secular state, which did not need the church to develop its social work as happened in other countries, permitting the reintegration of church and state. Thus the Uruguayan church knew how to live outside the framework of Christendom and accept the challenges of secularism, although this had been imposed. ## This story in other languages - [Português (Brasil)](https://www.faithfulnews.com/pt-br/papa-visita-uruguai-pais-mais-secularizado-da-america-latina-em-busca-da-ovelha-perdida) - [Türkçe](https://www.faithfulnews.com/tr/papanin-uruguay-ziyareti-sekulerlesmis-ulkenin-dini-tarihini-gundeme-getirdi) - [עברית](https://www.faithfulnews.com/he/story-290) - [Deutsch](https://www.faithfulnews.com/de/papst-besucht-uruguay-das-sakularste-land-lateinamerikas) - [Français](https://www.faithfulnews.com/fr/le-pape-en-uruguay-pays-de-secularisation-avancee-et-de-catholicisme-minoritaire) - [Italiano](https://www.faithfulnews.com/it/il-papa-in-uruguay-per-affrontare-la-sfida-della-secolarizzazione-nel-paese-piu-laico-dellamerica-latina) - [Nederlands](https://www.faithfulnews.com/nl/paus-bezoekt-uruguay-het-meest-geseculariseerde-land-van-latijns-amerika) - [Svenska](https://www.faithfulnews.com/sv/paven-besokte-uruguay-varldens-mest-sekulariserade-katolska-nation) - [Polski](https://www.faithfulnews.com/pl/papiez-przybyl-do-urugwaju-kraju-o-najnizszym-odsetku-katolikow-w-ameryce-lacinskiej)