Berkley Center

A mere walk through the streets of Santiago gives one the impression that Chile is a very Catholic country. Many of the streets are named after Catholic bishops, archbishops, and priests. Most of the schools one passes by, from grade schools to universities, are private Catholic schools named after saints. Many of the social justice organizations one may pass—such as the Hogar de Cristo (House of Christ), which provides a home to those on the street—have religious names and are funded by the Catholic Church. A glance at the calendar gives one the same idea: Chile’s national holidays include not only Christmas, but also the feast day of the Virgin of Carmel (Chile’s patron saint), the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, and many other religious holidays. In fact, one of the main events of Chile’s Independence Day is the Te Deum, a celebratory Catholic Mass that is celebrated in Santiago’s main cathedral. It’s also interesting that apart from the Virgin of Carmel, there are two other highly revered Catholic saints in Chile: Father Alberto Hurtado and Saint Teresa of the Andes. The former was a Jesuit who founded the Hogar de Cristo and who, because of his work with Chile’s most marginalized sectors, is considered the patron saint of workers and unionism. The latter, a discalced Carmelite nun, was Chile's first Catholic saint.

However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that religion plays a large role in Chileans’ personal lives. Once I asked a woman about the saint depicted on her necklace. She told me that it was Saint Teresa of the Andes. But when I asked her why Teresa was beatified, she said that all she knew was that the Catholic Church considered her a saint, and that was enough information for her.

When I did some research on Chilean religiosity, I realized that this woman reflects three contradictory national phenomena. According to Carla Lehmann’s article on investigations done by the International Social Service Programme, the World Values Survey, and Chile’s Center for Public Studies, many Chileans have faith and greatly revere spiritual institutions, but they don’t observe their faith regularly through those institutions. Among the 31 countries surveyed, Chile holds fourth place in number of believers with an index of 2.25 on a zero to three scale. Similarly, Chile holds second place in confidence in religious organizations with 52 percent. Nonetheless, only 19 percent of Chileans are observant, which puts the country in the second to last place in that category.

There are many reasons for this paradox. For instance, in his commentary on Lehmann’s article, Eduardo Valenzuela points out that the population density per church is 20,000 in the upper classes, and 73,000 in the lower classes. Therefore, many people aren’t religiously observant because they simply don’t have access to a church. Lehmann explains that although the Catholic Church tried to fix this problem by building chapels rather than temples in impoverished communities, there are not enough priests to serve at all of them, and most priests serve at several. Consequently, this sector of Chilean society continues to lack the resources that are available to other sectors.

However, I think the main reason behind this contradiction between belief and observance in Chile is what Óscar Godoy Arcaya, in his commentary on Lehmann’s article, calls “practical agnosticism.” Based on the conversations I’ve had with Chileans, I’d say that most people here do have faith, but they are skeptical about practicing that faith according to the precepts of an organized religion. In this sense, I think that Chileans are very much like many Americans. Yet, unlike Americans, Chileans are not vocal about their uncertainty. As Godoy Arcaya suggests, the confidence in religious institutions that Chileans seem to demonstrate in the investigations reflects the common belief that it’s not only politically incorrect but also morally wrong to criticize a church, especially the Catholic Church, or to question its dogmas. Hence, in response to questions about their spiritual lives, most Chileans say that they believe and belong to a particular church, but that they don’t attend church regularly.

In this sense, it’s interesting that Chileans frequently participate in popular religious practices. As Lehmann indicates, one-fourth of Chileans participate in processions in honor of the Virgin Mary, one-third make pilgrimages, and one-fifth participate in the Month of Mary. It seems then that for Chileans popular practices are a way of mitigating the contradiction between faith and doubt.