Berkley Center

A few weeks ago as I was boarding a micro (the little buses that zoom up and down the streets of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar), I noticed a sticker on the windshield that read: “"Si en San Cristobal te confiarás, de accidente no morirás,"” which translates as “"If you trust in Saint Christopher, you will not die in an accident."” At first I laughed, and then thought, “"Uh, oh!"” as I realized that perhaps this particular micro driver depended more on the protection of Saint Christopher than safe driving practices to prevent accidents.

The sticker I saw on the micro that day is just one of the many manifestations of presence of Catholicism in Chile. Currently, 70 percent of Chileans identify themselves as Catholic, and the church'’s influence can be seen almost everywhere—, from stickers and crucifixes on micros, to advertisements for Hogar de Cristo, a charitable organization created by the Catholic priest Father Alberto Hurtado, to the fact that divorce was legalized in Chile only six years ago in 2004 due to the influence of the Catholic Church. The divorce law in particular caught my attention. Having grown up in the United States, I have always been accustomed to the principle of separation of church and state, but from what I have observed in Chile thus far, it seems that the Church and the Chilean government have a different sort of relationship.

Reflecting on this relationship, I asked my Chilean grandmother the other day about the role of the Catholic Church during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet that began in 1973 and ended in 1989. She explained that the Church was very important during that time; at the time, she worked for a parish in Viña del Mar that resisted the regime. She also told me about the work of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, or the Vicariate of Solidarity, that the pope created at the request of Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez.

In 1973, during the start of the dictatorship, Cardinal Henríquez led a conglomeration of Christian churches along with those of other faiths, including Judaism, to form the Comité de Cooperación para la Paz (Committee on Cooperation for Peace). The committee worked to give legal and social assistance to those who were detained by the military government. But due to pressure from the government, the committee was dissolved in 1975. Cardinal Henríquez, however, did not give up the fight against the dictatorship; he asked the pope to create the Vicaría de la Solidaridad. While the Vicaría did not include other religious groups, it did have the full support of the Catholic Church, making it more difficult for the government to attack it. The organization gave support to those detained and tortured, aided in the search for those who had disappeared, publicly renounced the human rights abuses perpetrated by the government, and actively supported resistance movements.

Clearly, the Catholic Church played a very important role in the resistance against Pinochet's military regime. In addition to sharing the story of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad with me, my Chilean grandmother also lent me a book detailing the pope's visit to Chile in 1987. In the first pages, the author describes the Chilean Catholic Church, saying “from its beginning, it has had an extraordinary sensitivity to human sorrow. It has defended the innocent, consoled the crying, and alleviated suffering.” From what I have observed and experienced in Chile thus far, —the stickers on the micro, the strong presence of Hogar de Cristo, and the existence of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, this description of the Catholic Church seems to be quite true.