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Reforming Catholicism: Papal Power in Guatemala during the 1920s and 1930s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Bonar L. Hernández
Bonar L. Hernández*
Affiliation:
Iowa State University Ames, Iowa
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Extract

The status of Catholicism in Guatemala is truly deplorable,” remarked one Vatican diplomat as he gathered information about the Catholic Church in Guatemala in the 1920s. Its sorry condition, another papal representative contended, originated from the Liberal reform of the 1870s.

Type
Tibesar Lecture
Information
The Americas , Volume 71 , Issue 2 , October 2014 , pp. 255 - 280
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014

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References

I am grateful to the Social Science Research Council and the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin, for funding research for this study and to the staff at the Vatican Secret Archives and the Teologado Salesiano in Guatemala City for their assistance in helping to identify key primary source material. Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Matthew Butler, and José Barragán provided critical feedback at various stages during the completion of this article. This project would not have come to fruition without the continuing guidance of Pablo Mijangos, who, through his own research on Mexican Catholicism and his deep knowledge of the Vatican Secret Archives (particularly as its collection relates to the Mexican Church), convinced me that a study of this nature could reveal critical insights into the history of the Guatemalan Church. I also extend my thanks to two anonymous reviewers of The Americas and to Jill Ginsburg for her skillful copyediting. Last but not least, I wish to thank my parents and my sister for their patience and support.

1. Informazioni politico-religiose di Guatemala, 1926, Archivio della Sacra Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari [hereafter AAES], Guatemala, posizione 57, fascicolo 1.

2. For a discussion of the expansion of Catholicism in Guatemala during the early colonial period, see Oss, Adriaan C. van, Catholic Colonialism: A Parish History of Guatemala, 1524-1821 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 1–49.Google Scholar

3. The various social pronouncements of the Guatemalan bishops during the second half of the twentieth century, especially during Guatemala’s armed conflict between 1960 and 1996, can be found in Al servicio de la vida, la justicia y la paz: documentos de la Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala, 1956-1997 (Guatemala City: Ediciones San Pablo, 1997).Google Scholar

4. Calder, Bruce, Crecimiento y cambio de la Iglesia Católica guatemalteca, 1944-1954 (Guatemala City: Editorial José de Pineda Ibarra, 1970), pp. 47–62 Google Scholar; Chea, José Luis, Guatemala: la cruz fragmentada (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones, 1988)Google Scholar; Behrens, Susan Fitzpatrick, “From Symbols of the Sacred to Symbols of Subversion to Simply Obscure: Maryknoll Women Religious in Guatemala, 1953 to 1967,” The Americas 61:2 (October 2004), pp. 189–216.Google Scholar

5. Generally speaking, it has been anthropologists who have produced the classic works on Catholic Action in Guatemala. See especially Falla, Ricardo, Quiche rebelde. Estudio de un movimiento de conversión religiosa, rebelde a las creencias tradicionales, en Santiago Ilotenango, Quiché (1948-1970), (Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria, 1979)Google Scholar; Warren, Kay, The Symbolism of Subordination (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989)Google Scholar; and Britnall, Douglas E., Revolt Against the Dead: The Modernization of a Mayan Community in the Highlands of Guatemala (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1979).Google Scholar

6. For a discussion of the various religious and social transformations experienced by Catholic priests, nuns, and laypeople in Guatemala, see Hernández, Bonar L., “Restoring All Things in Christ”: Social Catholicism, Urban Workers, and the Cold War in Guatemala,” in Beyond the Eagle’s Shadow: New Histories of Latin America’s Cold War, Garrard-Burnett, Virginia, Lawrence, Mark A., and Moreno, Julio E., eds. (New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 2013), pp. 251–280 Google Scholar; Estrada, Deborah Levenson, Trade Unionists Against Terror: Guatemala City, 1954-1985 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Behrens, Susan Fitzpatrick, “Maryknoll Sisters, Faith, Healing, and the Maya Construction of Catholic Communities in Guatemala,” Latin American Research Review 44: 3 (2009), pp. 27–49 Google Scholar; Arias, Arturo, “Changing Indian Identity: Guatemala’s Violent Transition to Modernity,” in Guatemalan Indians and the State: 1540-1988, Smith, Carol A., ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), pp. 230–257 Google Scholar. For a first-hand account of these transformations, see Thomas, and Melville, Marjorie, Whose Heaven, Whose Earth? (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971)Google Scholar. For an overview of the emergence of a “progressive” Church in other parts of Latin America, see Mainwaring, Scott and Wilde, Alexander, eds., The Progressive Church in Latin America (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989).Google Scholar

7. Hubert J. Miller has provided the only serious overview of the influence of Rome in Guatemala during the 1920s and 1930s. See Miller, , “Las relaciones entre la Iglesia Católica y el Estado,” Anales de la Academia áe Geografìa e Historia 71 (1996), pp. 121–152.Google Scholar

8. Mainwaring, Scott, The Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 1916-1985 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Williams, Margaret Todaro, “Integralism and the Brazilian Catholic Church,” Hispanic American Historical Review 54:3 (August 1974), pp. 431–452 Google Scholar; Deutsch, Sandra McGee, Las Derechas: The Extreme Right in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, 1890-1939 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Zanatta, Loris, Del estado liberal a la nación católica: iglesia y ejército en los orígenes del peronismo; 1930-1943, Farberman, Judith, trans. (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 1996)Google Scholar. The history of Vatican diplomacy during the age of dictatorship in Europe is discussed in the following works: Rhodes, Anthony, The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators, 1922-1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973)Google Scholar; Coppa, Frank J., ed., Controversial Concordats: The Vatican’s Relations with Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Falconi, Carlo, The Popes in the Twentieth Century: From Pius X to John XXIII, Grindrod, Muriel, trans. (Boston:Little, Brown and Company, 1967)Google Scholar; Kent, Peter C., The Pope and the Duce: The International Impact of the Lateran Agreements (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981)Google Scholar; and Stehlin, Stewart A., “The Emergence of a New Vatican Diplomacy during the Great War and Its Aftermath, 1914-1929,” in Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age, Kent, Peter C. and Pollard, John F., eds. (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1994)Google Scholar. Scholars of the Vatican during the interwar period have taken various positions regarding Pius XI’s policy in regard to Nazi Germany. Contrasting accounts can be found in Cornwell, John, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York: Viking, 1999)Google Scholar; and Blet, Pierre, Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican (New York: Paulist Press, 1999).Google Scholar

9. Mecham, J. Lloyd, Church and State in Latin America: A History of Politico-Ecclesiastical Relations, rev. ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964), pp. 314–315, 308–309 Google Scholar; Holleran, Mary P., Church and State in Guatemala (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949), p. 68 Google Scholar; Sullivan-Gonzáles, Douglass, Piety, Power, and Politics: Religion and Nation Formation in Guatemala, 1821-1871 (Pittsburgh:University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), p. 24.Google Scholar

10. It is important to note here that the Costa Rican government signed a similar concordat in 1852 with the Vatican. Mecham, Church and State, pp. 316–317, 332 Google Scholar; Woodward, Ralph Lee Jr., Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 1821-1871 (Athens:University of Georgia Press, 1993), p. 258 Google Scholar. The Jesuits had been banned from Guatemala and the rest of Latin America since their expulsion by the Bourbon monarch Charles III in 1767. For useful discussions of anticlericalism in Latin America, see Mecham, , Church and State, p. 417 Google Scholar; and, more recently, Bantjes, Adrian A., “Mexican Revolutionary Anticlericalism: Concepts and Typologies,” The Americas 65:4 (April 2009), pp. 467–480.Google Scholar

11. Miller, , La Iglesia y el estado en tiempo de Justo Rufino Barrios, Muñoz, Jorge Lujan, trans. (Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria, 1976)Google Scholar; Miller, , “Conservative and Liberal Concordats in Nineteenth-Century Guatemala: Who Won?” Journal of Church and State 33 (1991), pp. 115–130 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holleran, , Church and State in Guatemala, pp. 200–201 Google Scholar. The classic work on the history of Protestantism in Guatemala is Garrard-Burnett, Virginia, Protestantism in Guatemala: Living in the New Jerusalem (Austin:University of Texas Press, 1998)Google Scholar. The historiography on the proclamation and effects of papal power is extensive. For an introduction, see Chadwick, Owen, A History of the Popes, 1830-1914 (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 161–214 Google Scholar; and Rhodes, Anthony, The Power of Rome in the Twentieth Century: The Vatican in the Age of Liberal Democracies, 1870-1922 (London:Sidgwick & Jackson, 1983), pp. 15–37.Google Scholar

12. This was the estimate provided in 1942 by Giuseppe Beltrami, the apostolic nuncio to Guatemala between 1940 and 1945. Beltrami, April 12, 1942, in Central America, Apostolic Nuncio Correspondence, 1942-1968, Maryknoll Mission Archives, Ossining, New York. Of course, the Guatemalan Church was not alone when it came to the shortage of priests. See Tibesar, Antonine, “The Shortage of Priests in Latin America: A Historical Evaluation of Werner Promper’s Priesternot in Lateinamerika The Americas 22:4 (April 1966), pp. 413–420.Google Scholar

13. Expulsioni di Mons. Muñoz, Archivio della Nunziatura Apostolica in America Centrale [hereafter ANAC], indice 1156, fascicolo 68, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1926-1928. President Orellana, like the nineteenth-century Liberals, was mainly interested in destroying the political (temporal) power of the Church.

14. Decree 917 and Decree 918, AAES, Guatemala, 1925-1929, pos. 65, fasc. 7.

15. Resumen, AAES, Guatemala, 1924-1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5.

16. The Holy See Ends Trouble with State of Central America, ANAC, indice 1156, fasc. 70, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1926-1928.

17. Alvarez, David J., “The Professionalization of the Papal Diplomatic Service, 1909-1967,” Catholic Historical Review 75 (1989), pp. 233–248 Google Scholar. Alvarez notes that papal diplomats became part of an increasingly professionalized army of diplomats around the world during the first part of the twentieth century.

18. Condizioni religiose del Guatemala, AAES, Guatemala, 1924, pos. 62, fasc. 3.

19. Monroy, Agustín Estrada, Datos para la historia de la iglesia en Guatemala, vol. 3 (Guatemala City: Tipografía Nacional, 1979), pp. 469.Google Scholar

20. Circa le condizioni economiche morali, religiose e politiche dell’Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, AAES, Guatemala, 1927, pos. 65, fasc. 7.

21. In 1903, Pope Pius X (1903-1914) enunciated this definition in a 1903 encyclical. “When in every city and village,” the Pope proclaimed, “the law of the Lord is faithfully observed, when respect is shown for the sacred things, when the sacraments are frequented, and the ordinances of Christian life fulfilled, there will certainly be no more need for us to labor further to see all things restored in Christ.” Pius X, E Supremi, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_x/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_04101903_e-supremi_en.html, accessed June 20, 2013. Edward Wright-Rios has documented the development of a Romanized version of Catholicism in nineteenth-century Mexico. See Wright-Rios, , Revolutions in Mexican Catholicism: Reform and Revelation in Oaxaca, 1887-1934 (Durham:Duke University Press, 2009), pp. 43–73.Google Scholar

22. Circa le condizioni economiche morali, AAES, Guatemala, 1927, pos. 65, fasc. 7.

23. Ibid. For a recent study of the Cristero rebellion, see Butler, Matthew, Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion: Michoacãn, 1927-29 (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2004).Google Scholar

24. Perdomo, Ricardo Bendaña, La Iglesia en Guatemala: síntesis histórica del catolicismo guatemalteco, vol. 1 (Guatemala City: Artemis-Edinter, 1996), p. 104–108.Google Scholar

25. Circa la candidatura di Mons. Pinol ad Arcivescovo di Guatemala, AAES, Guatemala, 1927, pos. 69, fasc. 1; Visita S. Recinos a Roma, ANAC, indice 1156, fasc. 69, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1926.

26. Mons. Pinol candidato a Guatemala, AAES, Guatemala, 1927, pos. 59, fasc. 9; Relazioni della Visita Apostolica, ANAC, indice 1156, fasc. 71, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1927.

27. Rhodes, , The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators, pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

28. The Holy See Ends Trouble, ANAC, indice 1156, fasc. 70, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1926-1928.

29. Monroy, Estrada, Datos para la historia, pp. 475–479.Google Scholar

30. “Discurso pronunciado por el Señor Arzobispo de Guatemala, Exmo. Monseñor Luis Durou y Sure, el día 12 de noviembre en la Catedral, en el acto solemne de la toma de posesión del Arzobispado,” Cristo Key 2 (November-December 1938), pp. 11.

31. Chadwick, , A History ofthe Popes, pp. 161–214, 312–331 Google Scholar; Rhodes, , The Power of Rome, pp. 98–106.Google Scholar

32. Edwards, Lisa Marie, “In Science and Virtue: The Education of the Latin American Clergy, 1858-1967” (PhD diss., Tulane University, 2002)Google Scholar; Wright-Rios, , Revolutions, pp. 60–72, 98–137.Google Scholar

33. Revista Eclesiástica 78 (November-December 1938), p. 226; Monroy, Estrada, Datos para la historia, pp. 482–483.Google Scholar

34. Monroy, Estrada, Datos para la historia, pp. 507–509.Google Scholar

35. Pius XI, Ubi Arcano dei Consilio, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_23121922_ubi-arcano-dei-consilio_en.html, accessed June 20, 2013. In this encyclical, Pius XI reaffirmed Pius X’s 1903 call on Catholics 1903 to “restore of all things in Christ.” Papal officials like Caruana presented a similar perspective. See Circa le condizioni economiche morali, AAES, Guatemala, 1927, pos. 65, fasc. 7.

36. Resumen, AAES, Guatemala, 1924-1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5.

37. Román, Reinaldo L., Governing Spirits: Religion, Miracles, Spectacles in Cuba and Puerto Rico, 1898-1956 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Levine, Robert M., Vale of Tears: Revisiting the Canudos Massacre in Northeastern Brazil, 1893-1897 (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Wright-Rios, , Revolutions.Google Scholar

38. The ecclesiastical archives in Guatemala City were unfortunately closed for renovation and reorganization at the time of the research for this study. With the exception of official pronouncements, this makes it difficult to gauge Church officials’ views of Maya religiosity. For their part, papal accounts oftentimes provide only superficial descriptions of indigenous religiosity. Therefore, the discussion of Maya religious practices in this article relies on the works of anthropologists who did field work among Mayan communities during the 1930s and 1940s.

39. Lincoln, Jackson Steward, An Ethnological Study of the Ixil Indians of the Guatemalan Highlands (Chicago:University of Chicago Library, 1945), pp. 127, 132, 138.Google Scholar

40. Wagley, Charles, Social and Religious Life of a Guatemalan Village (Menasha, Wise: American Anthropological Association, 1949), pp. 50, 68–75.Google Scholar

41. Bunzel, Ruth, Chichicastenango: A Guatemalan Village (Locust Valley, N.Y.: American Ethnological Society, 1952), pp. 163–164 Google Scholar. Maya, cofradías often melded with the structures of the municipal government, revealing, according to one anthropologist, the rise of a “Maya esoteric pattern.” Oliver LaFarge, Santa Eulalia: The Religion of a Cuchumatan Indian Town (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1947), p. 82.Google Scholar

42. Román, , Governing Spirits, p. 24 Google Scholar; Vanderwood, Paul, “Religion: Official, Popular, and Otherwise,” Estudios Mexicanos 16:2 (Summer 2000), pp. 411–442.Google Scholar

43. Resumen, AAES, Guatemala, 1924-1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5.

44. Revista Eclesiástica 56 (March-April 1935), p. 126. According to the archbishop, priests must not forget Jesus Christ’s words, as found in Matthew 5:16, to the disciples during his sermon at the Mount of Olives: “Your light must shine before others [so] that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.” Durou expressed a similar view in his pastoral letter Carta pastoral con motivo del santo tiempo de cuaresma sobre la doctrina cristiana (Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1936), p. 3.Google Scholar

45. Revista Eclesiástica 73 (January-February 1938), pp. 126; ibid., 74 (May-June 1938), pp. 157.

46. “One well trained priest,” Pius XI argued, “is worth more than many trained badly or scarcely at all.” Pius XI, Ad Catholici Sacerdotii, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19351220_ad-catholici-sacerdotii_en.html, accessed July 10, 2013.

47. Durou y Sure to Nolio, personal letter dated March 20, 1932, ANAC, 1922-1925 (1922, 1926-1932), fasc. 69; La rappresentanza pontificia nelle Repubbliche di El Salvador, Honduras e Guatemala, AAES, Guatemala, 1932-1935, pos. 73-75, fasc. 11.

48. Miller, “Las relaciones,” p. 126.

49. Revista Eclesiástica 77 (September-October 1938), pp. 202 Google Scholar; Revista Eclesiástica 61 (January-February 1936), pp. 195–196 Google Scholar. Miller indicates that, as of the 1930s, the government insisted that clerics could not wear clerical garb in public. Miller, “Las relaciones,” p. 127.

50. Sure, Durou y, Edicto Arzobispal (Guatemala City: Tipografía Sánchez y de Guise, 1936), p. 2 Google Scholar; “Carta del Excmo. Señor Arzobispo a los Señores Sacerdotes sobre el Día del Seminario,” Revista Eclesiástica 57 (May-June 1935), p. 13.Google Scholar

51. Revista Eclesiástica 73 (January-February 1938), p. 126.

52. This position conformed to the “Neo-Christendom” model that the Church adopted in various countries in Latin America during the 1930s and 1940s. For an insightful discussion of the “Neo-Christendom” model, see Mainwaring, , The Catholic Church, pp. 25–42.Google Scholar

53. For example, see Caruana’s 1927 report to Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, the Vatican’s Secretary of State. Relazioni della Visita Apostolica, ANAC, indice 1156, fasc. 71, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1927.

54. O’Malley, John W., A History of the Popes: From Peter to the Present (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010), pp. 271–278.Google Scholar

55. Ibid., pp. 278-279. See also Rhodes, , The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators.Google Scholar

56. Luis Durou to Caruana, and Decree 936, ANAC, indice 1156, fasc. 71, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1926. Muñoz, however, would die in exile before he could return to the country.

57. Pitti, Joseph A., “Jorge Ubico and Guatemalan politics in the 1920s” (PhD diss., University of New Mexico, 1975), pp. 275, 285.Google Scholar

58. Resumen, AAES, Guatemala, 1924-1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5; The Holy See Ends Trouble, ANAC, indice 1156, fasc. 70, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1926-1928.

59. Gleijeses, Piero, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954 (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 8–22 Google Scholar. See also relevant sections in Grieb, Kenneth, Guatemalan Caudillo, the Regime of Jorge Ubico: Guatemala, 1931-1944 (Athens:Ohio University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Dosal, Paul, Doing Business with the Dictators: A Political History of United Fruit in Guatemala, 1899-1944 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995)Google Scholar. La Matanza, the state-sponsored massacre that resulted in about 30,000 deaths, has been studied by Gould, Jeffrey L., To Rise in Darkness: Revolution, Repression, and Memory in El Salvador, 1920-1932 (Durham:Duke University Press, 2008)Google Scholar. Roorda, Eric Paul has provided an insightful cultural rendition of the Trujillo dictatorship in The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1930-1945 (Durham:Duke University Press, 1999).Google Scholar

60. Ubico sought to modernize the country through the expansion of capitalist relations, which reinforced “traditional” or “backward” economic relations, including forced labor. For a recent examination of his policies, see Way, J. T., The Maya in the Mall: Globalization, Development, and the Making of Modern Guatemala (Durham:Duke University Press, 2012), pp. 13–40.Google Scholar

61. Crisi di autorità nell’archidiocesi di Guatemala, AAES, Guatemala, 1921-1938, pos. 69, fasc. 9. The papal diplomats’ anticommunist position mirrored the Church of Rome’s official policy in regard to communism, which was proclaimed during the 1930s by Pius XI in his 1937 encyclical on “atheistic communism.” Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19031937_divini-redemptoris_en.html, accessed June 10, 2013.

62. Miller, , “Las relaciones,” pp. 127–131.Google Scholar

63. Ibid. p. 129.

64. Crisi di autorità nell’archidiocesi di Guatemala, AAES, Guatemala, 1921-1938, pos. 69, fasc. 9.

65. Recuerdo de la solemne Misa de Acción de Gracias a Dios (Guatemala City: Talleres Tipográficos San Antonio, 1932), p. 6.Google Scholar

66. Frankel, Anita, “Political Development in Guatemala, 1944-1954: The Impact of Foreign, Military, and Religious Elites” (PhD diss., University of Connecticut, 1969)Google Scholar; Miller, , “Las relaciones,” p. 126 Google Scholar. For the Spanish Church under Franco, see Callahan, William J., The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875-1998 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2000).Google Scholar

67. Crisi di autorità nell’arcidiocesi di Guatemala, AAES, Guatemala, 1921-1938, pos. 69, fasc. 9.

68. Eventuale ripresa delle relazioni diplomatiche, AAES, Guatemala, 1932-1935, pos. 73, fasc. 11: 42/33; AAES, Guatemala, 1932-1935, pos. 73, fasc. 11.

69. Monroy, Estrada, Datos para la historia, pp. 489–490 Google Scholar. Levarne was an emerging papal diplomat who would later serve as papal nuncio in Uruguay (1939), Egypt (1949), and Ireland (1954). Keogh, Dermot, Ireland and the Vatican: The Politics and Diplomacy of Church-State Relations, 1922-1960 (Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press, 1995), pp. 342–343.Google Scholar

70. Relazioni diplomatiche fra Santa Sede e Guatemala, AAES, Guatemala, 1932-1935, pos. 79, fasc. 11.

71. Revista Eclesiástica 57 (May-June, 1935), pp. 135, 137. The creation of this diocese in fact represented the revival of the old Diocese of Verapaz, which had been suppressed in 1607. Perdomo, Bendaña, La Iglesia en Guatemala, pp. 12–13.Google Scholar

72. Governo di Mons. Durou, AAES, Guatemala, 1921-1938, pos. 69, fasc. 9.

73. Revista Eclesiástica 76 (July-August 1938), p. 173. To this end, as mentioned above, Durou created Revista Eclesiástica in 1929.

74. La rappresentanza pontificia, AAES, Guatemala, 1932-1935, pos. 76, fasc. 11.

75. Monroy, Estrada, Datos para la historia, p. 481.Google Scholar

76. Durou y Sure to Nolio, ANAC, 1922-1925 (1922, 1926-1932), fasc. 69. See also Miller, “Las relaciones,” p. 126.

77. Miller, , “The Expulsion of the Jesuits from Guatemala in 1871,” Catholic Historical Review 54:4 (January 1969), pp. 636–654.Google Scholar

78. Condizioni religiose, AAES, Guatemala, 1924, pos. 62, fasc. 3. See also Perdomo, Bendaña, La Iglesia en Guatemala, pp. 110–112.Google Scholar

79. La rappresentanza pontificia, AAES, Guatemala, 1932-1935, pos. 76, fasc. 11.

80. Ritorno dei Padri Gesuiti in Guatemala, no. 2300, AAES, Guatemala, 1933-1946, pos. 77, fasc. 13.

81. Ibid. The apparent ambivalence of the Guatemalan hierarchy may have been supported by the silence of Revista Eclesiástica and other Church publications in regard to the return of the Jesuits and other foreign priests.

82. Ibid.

83. Governo di Mons. Durou, AAES, Guatemala, 1921-1938, pos. 69, fasc. 9.

84. Ritorno dei Padri Gesuiti in Guatemala, no. 2372, AAES, Guatemala, 1933-1946, pos. 77, fasc. 13.

85. Ibid., no. 2300.

86. Ibid.

87. Governo di Mons. Durou, AAES, Guatemala, 1921-1938, pos. 69, fasc. 9.

88. Ibid.

89. Calder, , Crecimiento, pp. 52–59 Google Scholar.

90. In 1954, the split between the Vatican and Guatemalan ecclesiastical authorities came to the fore when Archbishop Mariano Rossell Arellano (1939-1963) issued a pastoral letter (Carta sobre los avances del comunismo) in which he called on the population to actively oppose the government of Jacobo Arbenz (1951-1954). The Arbenz regime, the archbishop argued, had fallen to communist elements. In many respects, Rossell’s letter, which went to press without the approval of the papal nuncio (Genaro Verolino), marked a departure from the apolitical Church of the interwar period. Gleijeses, , Shattered Hope, pp. 212, 288.Google Scholar

91. Falla, Quiche rebelde; Hernández, “Restoring All Things in Christ”; Levenson Estrada, Trade Unionists.