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Reform and Reaction in the Colombian Catholic Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Lars Schoultz*
Affiliation:
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio

Extract

In the autumn of 1509 the explorer Alonso de Ojeda landed on the northern coast of South America, near where is today the city of Cartagena, and claimed the region in the name of Spain. As some of the natives appeared inclined to question the acquisitive proclivities of the Crown, Ojeda had read to them the principal articles of the Christian faith, hoping to demonstrate the benign nature of his invasion. Apparently feeling that his obligation to the Church was not yet fulfilled, he then informed the local residents “ especially of the supreme jurisdiction of the pope ” and required that they embrace the Catholic religion. Ojeda barely escaped with his life.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1973

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References

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89 Mutchler, , Church as a Political Factor, 134.Google Scholar Blame for the failure of Colombia’s agrarian reform cannot be placed at the Church's door, however, as the national administration continues to demonstrate that the “obedezco-pero-no-cumplo” syndrome is hardly confined to religious circles. At times, in fact, the Church has given agrarian reform its fullest support, as in 1967 when Bishop Giulio Franco Aringo offered the government 800 of his diocese's acres for distribution to peasants. Greater love hath no bishop… See Turner, , Catholicism and Political Development, 68.Google Scholar In his “Portents for Politics in Latin American Population Expansion,” Inter-American Economic Affairs 25 (Autumn, 1971), 44–5, Richard Lee Clinton has identified the syndrome.

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