Latin American Catholicism, decades of loss

Just as the data from the Latinobarómetro series does, the information from the Pew is the story of how the Catholic Church bankrupted itself.

Sadly, instead of betting on proximity and the will to serve their flock, many of the most influential Latin American Catholics bet on regaining influence through politics.

By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez

On January 21, the Pew Research Center, the preeminent institution for research on the public role of religion, published the results of its most recent survey on Latin American religious practice.

Following what they did a decade ago, a year after Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as Pope Francis, they publish a study based on samples from the six most populous nations in the region.

Their numbers are aligned with their own results from the 2014 survey, and with what this series found when going over nearly two decades of data from the Latinobarómetro series, as the story linked below proves.

And even more, it aligns with what national polling from Latin America has been documenting since the end of the 20th century. It is the continuation of the trend leading to the obliteration of what, until the 1950s was, the Latin American Catholic monolith.

As expected as the crack was, the way it is happening it has been full of surprises. First, the crack led to a major exodus towards non-Catholic variants of Christian religious practice, with Pentecostal churches seizing Catholicism's loss of appeal.

By the time the 20th century ended, there was another twist in the plot, moving Latin America towards a much more fractured, balkanized reality, where vast majorities of Latin Americans still claim to believe in God, but reject, as it happens elsewhere in the world, affiliation and adherence to a church.

The numbers offered by the Pew Research Center are useful because measuring the religious field has never been easy. Above all else, they confirm the data from Latinobarómetro based on a simple measure of self-declared affiliation.

But Pew offers a more nuanced and complex approach by adding measures for specific aspects of religious practice or belief, such as the belief in a Supreme being or how many times per month a person attends or participate in religious services.

Even if the Pew Research Center study was done with relatively small samples, the largest for Brazil (n=1,054) and the smallest for Argentina (n= 1,017), the questions allow one to get some glimmer at how Latin American societies seem to be leaving Catholicism behind and giving birth to a more complex religious field, where explicit adherence to specific churches or other forms of religious organizations is less relevant, but religious practice remains somehow meaningful.

The data for the most recent Pew study comes from national polls in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Taken together, the population of those six countries represents roughly 75 percent of the total population of Latin America.

It is clear that there is a notable absence of any Central American or Caribbean nation in the sample, and that could lead some to dismiss the findings, but this is the best shot at having a relatively full picture of what has happened in Latin America in the last decade or so.

Overall, the data reported by the Pew is based on a total of 6,234 questionaries with adults interviewed from January 22 through April 27, 2024. The specifics for each country’s sample and methods are here.

A window

The new Pew Research Center data opens a window into the current reality of the Latin America religious field. Taken together with previous reports by the Pew, the Latinobarómetro series, and other sources, what emerges is the crumbling of a model of collective organization of religious beliefs that has been happening for the last 40 years or so. But one needs to be aware that religious change happens, incubates, over long periods of time.

Assuming, as the Latin American far-right does, that all went awry in the 1960s because Paul VI decided to stop celebrating the Mass in Latin will get some funding from the U.S. Catholic far-right but is as good as an explanation as it could be one based in Astrology.

When looking at the somber data from Chile, one must keep in mind that Alberto Hurtado, the Jesuit priest now a saint of that denomination, was already warning the bishops of his country about an imminent shift in the religious make-up of the Andean country already in the 1940s.

Issuing that warning got him in hot water with the bishops of his time. Eighty years ago, his analysis hit all the marks about the potential risks Chile and Latin America at large were about to face.

Even if he was unable to foresee the specific reason behind the de-population of the Catholic Church in Chile: the clergy sexual abuse crisis, he was right to warn about how fragile was what appeared back in the 1940s, as a solid monolith.

The story going over the Latinobarómetro series goes into more detail into Hurtado’s prophetic writings about the status of Chile as a Catholic country in the section entitled “Demographic change”.

What the data from both Pew, Latinobarómetro and national pollsters in almost every single Latin American republic is a sharp decrease in the number of people willing to identify themselves as either Catholic or Christian and a concurrent trend of those who identify as having no religion.

Not necessarily fierce atheist militants willing to destroy organized religion, but people who for many reasons have come to the realization that religion is a private practice, one they decide on their own, one where they reject the mediation of priestly caste they distrust.

What the data tells in five snapshots

It would be impossible to go over the full 54-page report, and the more than 40 tables and graphs that help to understand the available data, so what follows is only a summary of what the data offers from a rather narrow point of view of the Latin American religious field through the lens of how it relates to the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the specific case of the Catholicism

It must be noted, however, that sexual abuse within the context of religious practice is in no way limited to the Catholic Church. Quite the opposite. Over several installments of this series evidence of abuse in other religious traditions has been addressed.

What makes abuse in Catholic contexts is the specific mix of a practice or tradition that used to enjoy an almost absolute control of the religious market in a region as vast and diverse as Latin America, but also the kind of elite arrangements that have precluded any meaningful police and judiciary action to punish perpetrators and, perhaps more importantly, to actually detonate processes to prevent sexual abuse from happening.

Even countries whose political elites talk the talk about an alleged “lay” approach to Church-State relations such as Mexico, are as unwilling to kick the hornets’ nest of thorough probes on clergy sexual abuse as those such as Peru, Panama or the Dominican Republic where Catholicism is still the religion of the State.

To illustrate the kind of change happening in the Latin American religious fields this piece will go over only five charts. The first, most basic, tells the story of what has happened in the six Latin American countries under consideration over the last decade.

The table tells a similar story to what the Latinobarómetro series says about the erosion of the old Catholic majority in Latin America.

It also proves how misguided the interventions were that top Catholic officials such as Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera had when he tried to deal with the reality that ultimately led to the current situation.

Following intuitions sponsored by John Paul II (see his messages to the bishops of Argentina in 1991 (content in Spanish) and the U.S. in 1993), the now emeritus archbishop of Mexico City tried to affirm his authority in the nation’s capital by issuing stern condemnations of non-Catholic religious or spiritual practice, chastising those who were willing to mix-and-match their own faith with other practices.

Barking at the wrong tree

His 1996 pastoral letter on the New Age goes into calling “those faithful who have the ability to influence the press and the mass media” to do “an invaluable service to Mexicans and the Church if they spread information and offer programs that will help to guide our people and give them Christian standards by which to evaluate the confusion ‘New Age’ causes.”

The fact that Rivera was making such a call one year before he publicly attacked Mexican journalists telling the news about Marcial Maciel’s abuses in the Legion of Christ, as this story recounts (content in Spanish) is just an irony too rich to dismiss, since now, 30 years after, even Catholic officials are willing to acknowledge that Maciel’s order had been marred by sectarian practices from its very inception, with special oaths and commandments preventing its members from ever criticizing Maciel, even in private.

In any case, the fact is that far from paying attention to Rivera’s condemnation of non-Catholic spiritual practices, Latin American Catholics are voting with their feet, leaving the Cathedrals and parishes empty.

The issue was never those alternate ways to understand what is “otherworldly,” the true issue was the growth of those who exit organized religion. The responses from the Catholic hierarchy, perhaps with the exception of Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, was during the 1990s and the Aughts similar to that of Rivera Carrera.

As an example, up until the Aughts, Colombian Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, prefect of the then Congregation for the Clergy, was pushing the same approach about Catholics leaving the Church, as old stories from the Internet in Spanish prove here and here.

The logic has been that to tying their understanding of what is Catholic to national or ethnic identity and to render religious dissidence as a rupture and a betrayal of such identity.

Whenever possible, they link it with disputes Catholicism has had in Latin America with Communism or Marxism. Those debates are recycled now following a fallacy-ridden reasoning developed by former Canadian academic Jordan Peterson about the existence of something called “cultural Marxism.”

Bringing Peterson's ideas has allowed the most reactionary wings of Latin American Catholicism to go after their new vital enemy, “gender ideology,” by adapting an old inventory of myths and conspiracy theories already known in Catholic circles.

The “former Catholic” category

The table after this paragraph goes over one of the Pew’s most notable contributions to understand what is actually happening in the Latin American religious field, as it allows to understand who are and where are the now former Catholics in the six countries in the sample.

Perhaps with the exception of Brazil, where the Catholic losses turn into Protestant gains, most of the Catholic losses in the region increase the size of the unaffiliated “flock”.

The third table looks at the share of adults in the six countries under consideration who identify themselves as religiously affiliated, who believe in God, and who say religion is very important to them.

If there is a silver lining in the Pew Research Center data for organized religion in Latin America is here, as it is clear that rejection of religious affiliation is not directly associated with an outright denial of the existence of God or a Supreme being associated with the notion of God, even if it is clear that the relevance of religion as such does suffer as a consequence of the changes in the Latin American religious landscape.

The data from the third table allows to understand what the fourth table reports about the Pew’s findings regarding attendance to religious services among Catholics in the countries in the region.

Argentine and Chilean Catholics seem to have entered a phase of disinterest or perhaps apathy in religious practice similar to the patterns one finds in European countries and way lower than what other Latin American countries report, with notable differences when compared to Argentine and Chilean Protestant populations who appear way more engaged in this category.

The numbers there are a warning to the Catholic Church about how fragile the situation is. In no country in the sample Catholics outpace protestants in this category, and it is hard to imagine that whatever advantage the Catholic Church retains in countries such as Panama, the Dominican Republic or Paraguay would compensate what the data in the sample shows.

The data in this table dispels any idea that what the Catholic Church needs is a return to “solemn” ceremonies in Latin, because that is not what the non-Catholic Christian denominations offer to their faithful. Perhaps what they offer is a closer relation with their flock and not the arcane use of a dead language as some sort of magic spell, as the number of Catholics attending religious services each week is far lower than their Protestant counterparts.

The fifth and last table in this summary looks at how “feminine” religious practice is in the six countries. Even if there are marked differences, from Mexico and Peru with a 15 points difference favoring females when comparing who attends religious services to the almost negligible but still relevant difference of 4 points in Chile.

Taken together, these five snapshots show exactly what both Pew’s recent data and two decades of Latinobarómetro trends make unmistakable: the steady erosion of Catholic affiliation, the rise of the unaffiliated, and the emergence of a more fragmented religious landscape across Latin America. The numbers clearly establish the direction and scale of change. What follows, then, moves beyond description.

A possible interpretation of the trends

The analysis that comes next—from the institutional missteps that deepened disaffiliation, to the sociopolitical entanglements that shaped the Catholic Church’s credibility, to the regional dynamics that reconfigured the religious marketplace—are an analysis of these trends.

They build on the patterns the data reveals, and the tracking down of what happens in the Latin American religious field, but they do not derive from Pew or Latinobarómetro directly; rather, they seek to make sense of why these measurable transformations unfolded as they did.

Starting with the issue of how “feminine” religious practice in contemporary Latin America is, it must be noted that in some dioceses there are attempts at regaining some foothold, some influence with the masculine crowd. Main problem is that to do so, the leaders of “all-male” rosaries and other similar popular devotions seem to assimilate the most toxic aspects of anti-feminist approaches, while aligning with Catholic organizations with standing accusations of abuse.

Abuse requires a sect-like environment and one notable case of organizations still fostering those types of settings are the so-called Heralds of the Gospel, an order-like organization with deep ties to the most reactionary Brazilian far-right, that has been the subject of several installments of this series, as the section titled “Fruits and trees” of the story linked below.

Evidence of the modus operandi of one of such organizations emerges in parallel from both Canada and Brazil, as the video available after this paragraph proves, produced by Radio Canada, the French language public TV service in the Great North. It tells the story of how the underage Canadian sons and daughters of Brazilian parents, are forcibly sent to their ancestral home country to enter religious life at houses managed by the aforementioned Heralds of the Gospel.

Audio in French. Subtitles available at YoutTube's Control Panel.

Unsurprisingly, in México one of the most notable drives to bring together an anti-feminist understanding of Catholicism and popular devotions uses some of the symbols—a peculiar type of cross, Medieval-inspired, used by the Heralds of the Gospel—specifically those of the so-called “Caballeros del Rosario Gral” (Knights of the Rosary Grail).

In the box after this paragraph, to the left is, in Spanish, the Mexican Caballeros poster to organize a male-led rosary in Mérida, Yucatán, on February 7, 2025. To the right is, in Portuguese, a screen capture of a page on the Heralds website. As it is possible to see, both the crosses in the Mexican and Brazilian messages have their ends resembling lily flowers (fleur de lis). The only difference is that the Mexican poster on Facebook sticks to a red over black design, while the Brazilian webpage follows a red and gold over a beige background.

“Que viva México,” is close to soap-opera actor Eduardo Verástegui, who has been the subject of several installments of this series. "Que viva México," like similar groups in the English-speaking world close to the Make America Great Again sphere, spreads misinformation about vaccines—even the vaccines against COVID-19—as this other post in Spanish in the same social media proves, despite their proven efficiency in addressing, at the time, the public health emergency.

Similar groups exist all over Latin America and in relatively large-sized Latino communities in the United States. This one is from Peru. This one operates in Paraguay. In Colombia they seem to have a more robust organization, as they do in El Salvador.

Back in 2023, AICA, the official news agency of the Argentine Conference of Catholic Bishops, promoted that kind of “all male” rosaries in their local dioceses, as the story available here, only in Spanish, proves.

A common feature in all these Facebook groups is how the mix their religious devotion with local political preferences for the parties or candidates to the far-right of the local political spectrum.

That is a known path for the Catholic far-right in Europe, leading political analysts there to label these groups as “identitarian,” as they bet big on rejecting migration as an invasion, despite their local labor markets being unable to meet their needs with local labor, turning their political preferences into nothing but an elaborate disguise for racism.

The politicization of religious devotion is evident, as one of many possible examples, in the Peruvian group, which is already promoting the current mayor of Lima, Rafael López Aliaga, a numerary of the Opus Dei who helped, back in January 2025, Juan Luis Cipriani to mock the restrictions Pope Francis set on the former archbishop of Lima for sexual abuse, as the story linked after this paragraph told at the time in the section titled “Some good.”

"Que Viva Mexico" is more relevant as it is one of the new vessels used by Juan Razo García, who is the former headmaster of the seminary of Saltillo, Mexico, to relaunch his Internet "ministry" of sorts.

Razo is a priest who claimed some global fame because he was part of the group of Spaniard, American, and Mexican priests who publicly prayed for Pope Francis’s death and who were the subject of the story linked after this paragraph, available only in Spanish or here with an automatic translation to English.

Juan Razo presence with “Que Viva México” was not to go over his alleged grievances against Pope Francis, but to repeat the old talking points of Catholicism against “communism” (see this video with audio only in Spanish).

Weaponizing rosaries

On top of promoting Razo García “Que Viva México” also weaponizes the use of the rosary, explicitly calling it “tu arma” (your gun), as this reel with audio only in Spanish, posted over Facebook, proves.

Their Colombian colleagues go further as to misappropriate Pope Leo XIV’s name to promote a message rendering Catholicism as synonymous with Crusades and medieval military action, while claiming they are fighting secularization.

Oddly enough there is no evidence of current Pope Leo XIV ever saying something like that, and only marginal, rather elliptic ways to find something similar in Leo XIII’s so-called "social Gospel," but with no implication of rallying the Catholic base to launch a new crusade as the administrators of the Colombian Male Rosary group in Facebook claim he did.

The weaponization of the rosary and other devotions is not exclusive of far-right Mexican or Colombian Catholics. Quite the opposite, Argentina has witnessed how a priest there, Javier Olivera Ravasi, who actively promotes the “all-male rosary” in Argentina and Latin America has been willing to actually carry and, allegedly pray, with a rosary made out of bullets (content in Spanish), as his own message in what used to be Twitter proves.

Even if in any other country Olivera Ravasi’s Twitter antics would be dismissed as the byproduct of a failure of character, in Argentina becomes a somber reminder of the Dirty War and how there were priests there, such as Christian Von Wernich, willing to use the sacrament of Confession to extract information for the Military Junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. More so, as Olivera Ravasi is connected, through his father, with the human rights violations of that time, which he deems legitimate and even necessary.

Also, even if he no longer belongs to the Institute of the Incarnate Word, an order-like organization with several accusations of abuse, sexual and otherwise, founded by Carlos Miguel Buela in the 1980s, he was originally a member of that order-like organization that tried to mimic to the dot the template developed by Marcial Maciel’s Legion of Christ.

One must keep in mind that Maciel’s abuses, as much as Buela’s were not happening in an institutional void. There were Catholic bishops all over the world willing to tolerate, perhaps promote, groups such as the Legion despite its predatory and sectarian practices, because they seemed to be effective to recruit candidates to religious life.

That is what explains why Maciel from the 1940s up to the 1990s was protected by Mexican, U.S., Spaniard, and Italian bishops, as much as Buela in the 1990s and the Aughts had Theodore McCarrick’s support in the United States and Héctor Rubén Aguer’s, the now emeritus archbishop of La Plata, and in Argentina. When McCarrick died back in 2025, an installment of this series went into some of the details of the relation between him and Buela.

More recently, in August 2024, the diocese of Zárate-Campana, where Olivera Ravasi had been living for several years, set canonical restrictions on his ability to reside there if he wants to remain a priest.

Up until now, almost two years later, it is hard to figure out what will the Argentine bishops do with him, as there seems to be no interest of the diocese where he is formally incardinated, that of San Rafael, in the Western province of Mendoza, to bring him back.

The statement issued by bishop Pedro María Laxague at the diocese of Zárate-Campana offers a glimpse into how divisive Olivera Ravasi’s brand of Catholicism is, and the kind of tensions he brings in when bragging about his political affiliations or when weaponizing a devotion such as the rosary.

More so as Olivera Ravasi, much like Razo and his fellow priests praying for Francis’s death, dedicate much of their time in social media to attack Francis with the usual load of innuendos about Francis being “lefty,” mocking his proposals for the future of the Catholic Church, especially the synodality aspect of them, or how he actually advocates for the eradication of “communists” who, as it is usually the case with that kind of cleric, could be whoever is not willing to abide by his ruling on any issue.

The picture before this paragraph highlights, however, the way radicalized priests such as Olivera Ravasi or Razo García band together at a U.S. diocese (San Francisco) known for its leader's affiliation with the most radical far-right wing of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. In that way, archbishop Salvatore Cordileone offers the Mexican, Spaniard, and Argentine priest some degree of legitimacy, more relevant for the kind of relation they build with the virtual flocks over Internet and social media.

It also highlights the risks that their brand of Catholicism poses to a Church already strained by a massive exodus of a large share of its flock over the last 20 years or so, and the difficulties bishops have to rein in priests who have the backing of powerful lay donors, willing to support their “ministry” as they are willing to say what they would not, at least not publicly.

More so, when the cleric willing to play that role is a bishop, as it happens with the now emeritus bishop of Tyler, Texas, Joseph Strickland, who was the subject of the story linked below.

Why would a Catholic faith revival come from the likes of Juan Razo, Olivera Ravasi or Joseph Strickland, clerics unwilling to abide by what used to be the basic rules of the Catholic Church?

They are, after all, clergymen way too desperate to find a conspiracy theory as the explanation for whatever does not suit their preferences. Why would such revival come from priests actively mocking their own ability as mediators with God when asking him for Pope Francis’s speedy death?

Oddly enough, the archdiocese of Toledo in Spain was willing to at least slap the wrists of Gabriel Calvo Zarruate, Rodrigo Menéndez Piñar and Francisco J. Delgado, some of the Spaniard priests acting out over YouTube, but no Mexican or U.S. diocese has done something similar with Razo García or with Charles Murr (at the time in New York City but back in the 1990s in Guadalajara, Mexico) and Roylán Recio (Colorado Springs, CO). So far, it is unknown if the diocese of Almería, Spain has done something about Juan Manuel Góngora's participation in that video.

And even if one is willing to put that aside, what good would it come for the Catholic Church betting big on people such as Olivera Ravasi and his aesthetics of “Christian violence,” as depicted by his use of a rosary made out of bullets?

Religious devotion and political preference

Main problem for Catholicism it is not only the massive exodus documented by that data from Latinobarómetro and Pew Research Center. It is also its will in betting its own future on its relationship with sect-like organizations, willing to drive, as one of many possible examples, an all-out war attacking Pope Francis.

One only has to go over the suppression of the Sodalitium to figure out how strained are the relations within the Catholic Church, in Peru and elsewhere in Latin America, and ask if John Paul II’s bet on organizations such as the now suppressed Sodalitium and its sect-like attitudes are not part of the mix that explain the massive exodus documented by both the Pew Research Center and Latinobarómetro.

It is necessary to keep in mind how organizations such as the Sodalitium or the Heralds are prone to develop the sect-like behavior about being the target of some kind of conspiracy against them, as the section “Growth filthy lesson” of the story linked after this paragraph told in January.

As stated then, “the Roman Curia during John Paul II’s pontificate was willing to turn a blind eye to” sectarian practices because sectarian organizations such “as the Heralds, the Legion of Christ, Opus Dei or the now suppressed Sodalitium of Christian Life showed their Excel books full of names of seminarians about to be ordained.”

And here is where Jordan Peterson is again relevant, as he offered reactionary Catholic clergy whatever legitimacy he had as a former academic. Peterson’s “Professor from Canada” pedigree offers up until now characters in the Catholic far-right, a way to justify their own dissatisfaction

Peterson also offers Razo and his colleagues the seeds of distrust in the very institution they embody, so what trust would they be able to foster in the Catholic Church if they attack the sitting Pope every time they have a mic at hand?

The Latin American far-right uses Peterson’s 'Cultural Marxism' lore to rebrand their parochial resentment as a sophisticated, global defense of the West. Peterson is not the cause of the rot, but one of many scavengers feeding on it.

He is special as he provides a 'scientific' veneer to a sect-like organizations unable to develop similar, even if flawed, critiques on their own to justify their mutiny against Rome while, oddly enough, being nostalgic of Popes such as Pius IX or Pius X, who would crush dissenters willing to go where Razo, Olivera Ravasi, Strickland or Murr go daily.

In that respect, the data from Pew and Latinobarómetro force a reconsideration of the Vatican’s approach to Latin America and other regions of the world and more precisely how to build healthy flocks, whose agenda is not the U.S.-style cultural wars.

This is relevant because, going back to what used to be said about the region in Rome in the 1980s and 1990s, one would find John Paul II talk about Latin America about a region full of hope and promise for the Catholic Church in what was, at the time, the future.

Pope Karol Wojtyla’s bet, however, was shaped by his preference for movements such as the Legion of Christ’s Regnum Christi, the Sodalitium of Christian Life, the Neocatechumenal Way, the so called Kikos, the Institute of the Incarnate Word, the Heralds of Gospel, and the Opus Dei.

All of them have been at the center of some kind of scandal, from Mexico City, to Lima, Sao Paulo, and Buenos Aires, their sect-like understanding of Catholicism was good to fill stadiums and sports arenas in the 1990s and Aughts, but 20 or 30 years later, there is no evidence of any ability to sustain their growth. Quite the opposite, as they usually are the wood keeping the fire of the sexual abuse crisis scandal alive.

Single-issue trap

When taken together, the data from the Latinobarómetro and Pew series and from the surveys from local pollsters offer a bleak account of broken promises, and the endless blame-game among the different factions of an institution that also wants to remain relevant in the political arena by betting big on supporting candidates for office even if such bets end having the kind of bitter after-taste one finds in the relation between Nicaraguan strongman Daniel Ortega and now deceased Cardinal Miguel Obando Bravo.

That is not, by the way, an odd one off, a story from a banana republic. It is a cautionary tale about how Catholicism forces down its take on issues of public health and private morals with larger, more complex and troubling mirrors. One of such reflections is what explains the kind of relationship the U.S. Catholic bishops built with Donald Trump over the issue of abortion.

That is the very definition of the “single-issue trap” or “single-issue politics”, a classic dilemma of political science and policy analysis chastising the Catholic Church ever since John Paul II stubbornly tried to ban abortion in Italy in the early years of his Papacy.

It would be impossible to go over the history of Catholic opposition to any and all kinds of abortions, but betting on one single, non-negotiable bargaining chip has not been as successful as many bishops want to believe.

The worst-case scenario is that of the aforementioned Nicaraguan Cardinal Miguel Obando Bravo when he blessed in 2006 the installation of what is now a dictatorship in exchange for a total ban on abortion.

By tethering its inventories of trust to the fate of abortion or “family values,” the Catholic hierarchy has effectively auctioned off in many countries its ability to challenge the broader authoritarian impulses of the political partners willing to cancel or dismiss rights as to offer them such bans.

Whether it is the U.S. bishops’ transactional relationship with Trump or the historical compromises with Latin American strongmen, the result is the same: the Church gains a temporary veto over private morals while losing the moral standing to act as a check on public power, facilitating the collapse of institutional Catholicism not just as a spiritual crisis, but as part of a broader systemic failure, which is perhaps what explains the data from Latinobarómetro and Pew.

And if that was the whole story there would be some way to find a silver lining of sorts in the idea of a value-based intransigence. The main problem emerges when the negatives of the single-issue trap meet with the negatives of the clergy sexual abuse crisis, with priests such as Chilean Jesuit Renato Poblete forcing his female sexual partners to go through what Catholicism itself labels as the mortal sin of abortion to protect his own ecclesiastical career, with the blessing of the leaders of his own Church.

Self-inflicted wounds

More recently, as one of many possible examples, the Argentine Conference of Catholic Bishops (content in Spanish) has criticized the Argentine government attempt at lowering to 13 the age at which a minor can be charged as an adult for crimes, as the video linked below tells.

Dubbed audio version of Milei's proposal.

The issue is tricky in Argentina, as there 16-year-olds can enroll to vote in elections, but there were some restrictions to the ability of authorities to charge 16 and 17 years-olds as adults in criminal cases. But whatever objections the Argentine episcopate has to Javier Milei’s idea of lowering the age of criminal responsibility must be filtered through the lens of the same conference’s record.

And even worse. To promote his penal reform, Milei mimics the Catholic Church parlance on zero-tolerance to crime, much like the Catholic Church uses the idea when dealing with clergy abuse, as the video below proves. As several installments of this series last year proved, zero-tolerance is a good but extremely hard to achieve goal whether for the Catholic Church or for the national governments of any given country.

Whether it is Milei in Argentina or historical precedents like Felipe Calderón Hinojosa in Mexico, the macho pivot to acting tough on crime serves as a mirror to the Church's own failed internal discipline.

Just as the Vatican’s zero-tolerance rhetoric has been not enough to prevent systemic abuse in the Catholic Church, the secular push for harsher penalties on minors or wars on organized crime often serves as a cheap political banner that masks, rather than resolves, major failures of institutional design.

The main risk for the Catholic Church at this point is that on top of being unable to put forward a robust critique of Milei’s reform is also unable to mobilize its base because there is none, since it lost it as proven by both Latinobarómetro and Pew Research Center. And even worse, far from addressing the cause of the demographic crash, it makes it worse by clinging to a macho-infused discourse that sees the feminine and feminism as its vital enemy.

As far as it is possible to grasp the many, disperse efforts of the Catholic Church in the region, a majority of the Catholic hierarchy seems willing to effectively stop any effort at winning back the now “former catholic” crowd (see table 3) as to regain the share of the local religious market.

Instead, they seem intent on finding their Constantine, the ruler or more broadly speaking the powerful individual able to remarry Church and State. More troublingly, they try to do it with the leverage of a militant few, those willing to play Crusader as to recapture Jerusalem.

By nurturing that radical vanguard, in ways quite similar to what the priests linked to national liberation movements wanted to achieve in Colombia, Peru, Central America and even Mexico in the 1960s and 1970s, the institution assumes that its future will be insured by a perpetually mobilized base.

Instead of offering a close pastoral care, in their language, to Latin American societies, they are fueling once again an internal sectarian drive, way too prone to render Popes such as Francis and Paul VI as enemies of themselves and the Church at large, who bet big on sectarian practices to keep a tiny base perpetually mobilized against feminism, globalism, human rights, and whatever new foes their leaders decide to add to their catalog of grievances.

In doing so, the Catholic Church ties its own hands, as it did while supporting Trump and MAGA candidates in the United States to achieve a full ban on abortion, making almost impossible for the same Church to defend and advocate for migrants, or as it happens in Argentina, where the close relations of the Milei regime with the most radical wings of the Catholic far-right, render the Catholic Church unable to criticize Milei’s attempt to jail boys and girls, as young as 13, with harsh sentences.

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A summary of this piece is available as audio after this paragraph.

Note on production: The text of this summary was written and edited solely by the author. The delivery of the audio summary was achieved using a high-quality, text-to-speech engine Microsoft Word for Web. The AI was used for voice generation only, not content creation.