Law and Religion in Colombia: Legal Recognition of religious Entities

I. INTRODUCTION In 1810 there began in Colombia, as in most Latin American countries, the process leading to independence from Spain.1 Though this process necessarily and permanently altered relations between Spanish rulers and their former subjects in America, the separation did not bring immediate radical changes in relations between the Catholic Church and the emerging republics. Those changes came about gradually as a result of developments within Colombia in particular and throughout Latin America generally. Spain determined in the New World that the Catholic Church was the only recognized and established religion. With independence in the nineteenth century, the new authorities maintained the same state-religion model. Moreover, under the system of "royal patronage,"2 defined by agreements between the Holy See and the Spanish throne, the colonial authorities had enjoyed considerable powers in ecclesiastical affairs. As the newly independent authorities sought to maintain such powers, the Patronato Real thus became without interruption the Patronato Republicano. Two hundred years later, there are no more Patronatos in Latin America. While in some Latin American countries there are still present, at the constitutional level, references of various kinds to the Catholic Church,3 the trend is toward a model of church-state relations following the European system,4 influenced both by international human rights movements5 and by the doctrine of the Catholic Church itself, which took in Vatican II an approach to the issue precisely in line with evolving notions of human rights worldwide, underscoring universal recognition of religious freedom in all its dimensions - individual, collective, and institutional.6 This Paper explains the genesis and fundamental characteristics of modern Colombian church- state relations by placing them first in their general and then in their more particular contexts. II. CHURCH-STATE RELATIONS IN LATIN AMERICA A. Foundational Relations Between the Catholic Church and Latin American States The modern realities of church-state relations in Colombia may be fully understood only by first considering the various systems that have historically defined such relations in Latin America.7 While each country has its own characteristics,8 the movement in Latin America from strict Catholic confessionality to secular systems has been influenced by a number of common factors. We may first consider the general persistence throughout Latin America of Patronato systems following independence from Spain. This resulted not only from an understandable legislative inertia, or from reasons of simple common sense of holding the previous regime as a default rule until the new legal regime was consolidated. In fact, the continuity of the Patronato was a genuine act of sovereignty, that is, the assumption of a prerogative of the public authority to establish a legitimacy it could not enjoy without retaining its accustomed management of Church affairs. In many cases the Patronato was defended by local ecclesiastical authorities, unable at the time to understand any need to break free of government control. The state, after all, was as yet "confessional," and therefore operated to sanction the Church and its activities. At the same time, the Patronato Republicano assumed the characteristics of European liberalism and intended not only to directly influence the Catholic Church but also, as far as possible, to control the Church. Over time, some of these difficulties were corrected in concordats - agreements, essentially treaties - with the Holy See.9 However, the tendency of liberalism was always to consider the state over the Church, which became a civil association governed by the laws of the state. During the pontificate of Pope Gregory XVI (1831-1846), the new republics in Latin America were recognized by the Holy See. Thus began a period in which concordats were signed between the Holy See and various Latin American regimes: Costa Rica (1852), Guatemala (1852), Haiti (1860), Honduras (1861), Nicaragua (1861), San Salvador (1862), Ecuador (1862), Venezuela (1862), and Colombia (1887). …