§ 209.1. Mexico.—Of all the American states, Mexico, since its independence in 1823, has been most disturbed by revolutions and civil wars. The rich and influential clergy, possessing nearly a half of all landed property, was the factor with which all pretenders, presidents and rulers had to reckon. After most of the earlier governments had supported the clergy and been supported by them, the ultimately victorious liberal party under president Juarez shook off the yoke in 1859. He proclaimed absolute religious freedom, introduced civil marriage, abolished cloisters, pronounced church possessions national property and exiled the obstinate bishops. The clerical party now sought and obtained foreign aid. Spain, France and England joined in a common military convention in 1861 in supporting certain claims of citizens repudiated by Juarez. Spain and England soon withdrew their troops, and Napoleon III. openly declared the purpose of his interference to be the strengthening of the Latin race and the monarchical principle in America. At his instigation the Austrian Grand-Duke Maximilian was elected emperor, and that prince, after receiving the pope’s blessing in Rome, began his reign in 1864. Distrusted by all parties as a stranger, in difficulties with the curia and clergy because he opposed their claims to have their most extravagant privileges restored, shamefully left in the lurch by Napoleon from fear of the threatening attitude of the North American Union, and then sold and betrayed by his own general Bazaine, this noble but unfortunate prince was at last sentenced by Juarez at a court-martial to be shot in 1867. Juarez now maintained his position till the end of his life in 1872, and strictly carried out his anticlerical reforms. After his death clericalism again raised her head, and the Jesuits expelled from Guatemala swarmed over the land. Yet constitutional sanction was given to the Juarez legislation at the congress of 1873. The Jesuits were driven across the frontiers, obstinate priests as well as a great number of nuns, who had gathered again in cloisters and received novices, were put in prison.—Also Evangelization advanced slowly under sanction of law, though regarded with disfavour by the people and interfered with often by the mob. It began in 1865 with the awakening of a Catholic priest Francisco Aguilar and a Dominican monk Manuel Aguas, through the reading of the Scriptures. They laid the foundation of the “Iglesia de Jesus” of converted Mexicans, with evangelical doctrine and apostolic-episcopal constitution, which has now 71 congregations throughout the whole country with about 10,000 souls. This movement received a new impulse in 1869, when a Chilian-born Anglican episcopal minister of a Spanish-speaking congregation in New York, called Riley, took the control of it and was in 1879 consecrated its bishop. Besides this independent “Church of Jesus” North American missionaries of various denominations have wrought there since 1872 with slow but steady success.

§ 209.2. In the Republics of Central and Southern America, when the liberal party obtained the helm of government through almost incessant civil wars, religious freedom was generally proclaimed, civil marriage introduced, the Jesuits expelled, cloisters shut up, etc. But in Ecuador, president Moreno, aided by the clergy, concluded in 1862 a concordat with the curia by which throughout the country only the Catholic worship was tolerated, the bishops could condemn and confiscate any book, education was under the Jesuits, and the government undertook to employ the police in suppressing all errors and compelling all citizens to fulfil all their religious duties. And further the public resolved in 1873, although unable to pay the interest of the national debt, to hand over a tenth of all state revenues to the pope. But Moreno was murdered in 1875. The Jesuits, who were out of favour, left Quito. The tithe hitherto paid to the pope was immediately withheld, and in 1877 the concordat was abrogated. As Ecuador in Moreno, so Peru at the same time in Pierola had a dictator after the pope’s own heart. The republic had his misgovernment to thank for one defeat after another in the war with Chili.—Bolivia in 1872 declared that the Roman Catholic religion alone would be tolerated in the country, and suffered, in common with Peru, annihilating defeats at the hand of Chili.—When at St. Iago in Chili, during the festival of the Immaculate Conception in 1863, the Jesuit church La Compania was burnt and in it more than 2,000 women and children consumed, the clergy pronounced this disaster an act of grace of the blessed Virgin, who wished to give the country a vast number of saints and martyrs. But here, too, the conflicts between church and state continued. In 1874 the Chilian episcopate pronounced the ban against the president and the members of the national council and of the Lower House who had favoured the introduction of a new penal code which secured liberty of worship, but it remained quite unheeded. When then the archiepiscopal chair of St. Iago became vacant in 1878, the pope refused on any condition to confirm the candidate appointed by the government. After the decisive victory over Peru and Bolivia, the government again in December, 1881, urgently insisted upon their presentation. The curia now sent to Chili, avowedly to obtain more accurate information, an apostolic delegate who took advantage of his position to stir up strife, so that the government was obliged to insist upon his recall. As the curia declined to do so, his passports were sent to the legate in January, 1883, and a presidential message was addressed to the next congress which demanded the separation of the church and state, with the introduction of civil marriage and register of civil station, as the only remaining means for putting down the confusion caused by papal tergiversation. The result of the long and heated debates that followed was the promulgation of a law by which Catholicism was deprived of the character of the state religion and the perfect equality of all forms of worship was proclaimed.—Guatemala in 1872 expelled the Jesuits whose power and wealth had become very great. In 1874 the president Borrias opened a new campaign against the clergy by forbidding them to wear the clerical dress except when discharging the duties of their office, and closing all the nunneries.—In Venezuela, in 1872, Archbishop Guevara of Caracas, who had previously come into collision with the government by favouring the rebels, forbade his clergy taking part in the national festival, and put the cathedral in which it was to be celebrated under the interdict. Deposed and banished on this account, he continued from the British island of Trinidad his endeavours to stir up a new rebellion. The president, Guzman Blanco, after long fruitless negotiations with the papal nuncio, submitted in May, 1876, to the congress at St. Domingo the draft of a bill, which declared the national church wholly independent of Rome. The congress not only homologated his proposals, but carried them further, by abolishing the episcopal hierarchy and assigning its revenues to the national exchequer, for education. Now at last the Roman curia agreed to the deposition of Guevara and confirmed the nomination of his previously appointed successor. But president Blanco now asked congress to abolish the law, and this was agreed to.—In the United States of Colombia since 1853, and in the Argentine Republic since 1865, perfect liberty of faith and worship have been constitutionally secured. From the latter state the Jesuits had been banished for a long time but had managed to smuggle themselves in again. When in the beginning of 1875 Archbishop Aneiros of Buenos Ayres addressed to the government which favoured the clerical party rather than to the congress which was the only competent court, a request to reinvest the Jesuits with the churches, cloisters, and properties held by them before their expulsion, a terrible outbreak took place, which the archbishop intensified to the utmost by issuing a violent pastoral. A mob of 30,000 men, convened by the students of the university, wrecked the palace of the archbishop, then attacked the Jesuit college, burnt all its furniture and ornaments on the streets and by means of petroleum soon reduced the building itself to flames. Only with difficulty did the military succeed in preventing further mischief. In October, 1884, the papal nuncio was expelled, because, when the government decidedly refused his request to prevent the spread of Protestant teaching and to place Sunday schools under the oversight of the bishops, he replied in a most violent and passionate manner. About the same time the republic of Costa-rica issued a law forbidding all religious orders, pronouncing all vows invalid, and threatening banishment against all who should contravene these enactments, and also an education act which forbade all public instruction apart from that provided by the State.

§ 209.3. Brazil.—In Brazil down to 1884, the “Catholic Apostolic Roman Religion” was, according to the constitution, the religion of the empire. But from 1828 there was a Protestant congregation in Rio de Janeiro, and through the inland districts, in consequence of immigration, there were 100 small evangelical congregations, with twenty-five ordained pastors, whose forms of worship were of various kinds. In earlier times Protestant marriage was regarded as concubinage, but in 1851 a law was passed which gave it civil recognition. But the bishops held to their previous views and demanded of married converts a repetition of the ceremony. Since 1870, however, the government has energetically opposed the claims of the clergy who wished only to acknowledge the authority of Rome. Protestant marriages were pronounced equally legitimate with Catholic marriages, no civil penalties are incurred by excommunication, all papal bulls are subject to the approval of the government, and it was insisted that announcement should be made of all clergy nominated. The clergy considered freemasonry the chief source of all this liberal current, and against it therefore they directed all their forces. The pope assisted by his brief of May, 1873, condemning freemasonry. At the head of the rebel prelates stood Don Vitalis Gonsalvez de Oliveira, bishop of Olinda and Pernambuco. He published the papal brief without asking the imperial permission, pronounced the ban upon all freemasons and suspended the interdict over all associations which refused to expel masonic brothers from their membership. In vain the government demanded its withdrawal. It then accused him of an attack upon the constitution. The supreme court ordered his detention, and he was placed in the state prison at Rio de Janeiro in January, 1874. The trial ended by his being sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, which the emperor as an act of grace commuted to detention in a fortress, and set him free in a year and a half. In consequence of this occurrence the Jesuits were, in 1874, expelled from the country. The increasing advent of monks and nuns from Europe led the government, in 1884, to appoint a commission to carry out the law already passed in 1870, for the secularization of all monastic property after providing pensions for those entitled to support. In the same year all naturalized non-Catholics were pronounced eligible for election to the imperial parliament and to the provincial assemblies. The members belonging to the evangelical churches now number about 50,000, of whom 30,000 are Germans.566