page_title: History of the Catholic Church in Mexico
section_title: Charitable Institutions
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Catholic Church in Mexico / Spanish Bourbon Era 1700–1821 / Charitable Institutions
caption_attribution_description: English: National Monte de Piedad Building, on site of Houses of Hernan Cortes, NW corner of Zocalo in the Centro of Mexico City
context_page_description: The history of the Catholic Church in Mexico dates from the period of the Spanish conquest and has continued as an institution in Mexico into the twenty-first century. Catholicism is one of the two major legacies from the Spanish colonial era, the other being Spanish as the nation's language. The Catholic Church was a privileged institution until the mid nineteenth century. It was the sole permissible church in the colonial era and into the early Mexican Republic, following independence in 1821. Following independence, it involved itself directly in politics, including in matters that did not specifically involve the Church.
  In the mid-nineteenth century the liberal Reform brought major changes in church-state relations. Mexican liberals in power challenged the Catholic Church's role, particularly in reaction to its involvement in politics. The Reform curtailed the Church's role in education, property ownership, and control of birth, marriage, and death records, with specific anticlerical laws. Many of these were incorporated into the Constitution of 1857, restricting the Church's corporate ownership of property and other limitations.
context_section_description: Pious works (obras pías) were expressions of religious belief and the wealthy in Mexico established institutions to aid the poor, sometimes with the support of the Church and the crown. The 1777 establishment of what is now called Nacional Monte de Piedad allowed urban dwellers who had any property at all to pawn access to interest-free, small-scale credit. It was established by the Count of Regla, who had made a fortune in silver mining, and the pawnshop continues to operate as a national institution in the twenty-first century, with its headquarters still right off the Zócalo in Mexico City with branches in many other places in Mexico. The Count of Regla's donation is an example of private philanthropy in the late colonial period.
  A much earlier example was the endowment that conqueror Hernán Cortés gave to establish the Hospital de Jesús, which is the only venue in Mexico City that has a bust of the conqueror.
  Another eighteenth-century example of private philanthropy that then became a crown institution was the Hospicio de Pobres, the Mexico City Poor House, founded in 1774 with funds of a single ecclesiastical donor, Choirmaster of the Cathedral, Fernando Ortiz Cortés, who became its first director. That institution lasted about a century, until 1871, going from a poor house or work house for adults to mainly being an orphanage for abandoned street children.
caption: National Monte de Piedad Building off the Zócalo in Mexico City.
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