The Holy See, American Catholics and the anti-Protestant campaigns in Latin America during the Early 1920s

This paper aims to analyze the Vatican effort to contrast protestant proselytism in South America during the Early 1920s. During the inter-war period the Catholic Church conducted an intensive campaign to contain Protestant proselytism in many Catholic countries and in particular in the areas where Anglo-Saxon influence was growing: Southern and Central America, the Caribbean Islands, the Philippines and many countries of Southern and Eastern Europe. The Catholic Church responded to the advance of Protestantism everywhere. Its campaign was particularly intense in the Latin American world which was a traditional stronghold of Catholicism. Documents kept in the Vatican Secret Archive show that the Holy See conducted a specific and uniform policy in that region to combat Protestant proselytism, involving in this effort the American Catholics. The Vatican policy was particularly vigorous in the countries which had been under Spanish rule until 1898, which were now under American control: Cuba and Puerto Rico. The struggle was equally intense in other areas of Central and Southern America where U.S. influence was growing, such as Guatemala, Costa Rica, anticlerical Mexico and the Andean countries. But even traditionally solid Catholic countries such as Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil began to be affected by the growing advance of Protestantism. With regard to all these countries, Vatican tried to oppose Protestant proselytism with a coordinated campaign, able to guide actions taken by local Catholic hierarchies, which often seemed unable to face the Protestant infiltration on their own. On this point the correspondence between Cardinal Gasparri and the various Vatican Nuncios is illuminating: many Nuncios emphasized the necessity of gaining the support of American Catholics and American religious Orders to prevent the march of Protestantism, which was being promoted by American Protestant Churches.