The Catholic Church in Uruguay

In regard to your article "Uruguay—the forgotten dictatorship" (Salient August 29) it appears that your reference material contains a typical Catholic half-truth in that the Catholic strength in Uruguay is concealed. Your article says that "The Church (mainly Protestant) is only just alive while many clergymen are rotting in Jails ". Any inference that Uruguay is a Protestant country is entirely incorrect. According to the 1974 Catholic Almanac, there are 2,600,898 Catholics in a total population of 2,955,296 (i.e. 88% Catholic). The country has 35 Seminaries, 342 Catholic schools, 212 parishes and 633 priests. The constitution of 1830 made Catholicism the religion of the state and subsidised some of its activities. With the seperation of Church and State it should be noted that the Catholic definition of "Church" includes all of education, most of social policy and some of political policy, and is thus entirely different to the Protestant concept of separation of Church and State).

An indication of the Catholic strength in Uruguay is given later in your article where you have described and explicitly mentioned the Fascist Corporate State. The Corporate State is described in the Papal Encyclopedia Quadragesimo Anno of 1931, and for many years it formed the basis of the Roman Catholic solution of social problems. Probably the two best examples of the Corporate State in recent times were the Clerico-Fascist dictatorships of Spain and Portugal in which persecution of non-Catholics was part of government policy. It also happened in South Vietnam under the Diem regime.

To sum up, Uruguay, like many other latin American countries, is fundamentally a Roman Catholic country and it is only when the Roman Catholic strength is known that one can appreciate the full implications of Protestant clergy rotting in jails as described in your article.