Christmas is a date expected by many people around the world, however, there is a country in the region that does not experience it this way.
This is Uruguay, the only Latin American country that does not celebrate or visit its cities for this Christmas season. The main reason is related to the separation between state and church more than 100 years ago.
Since 1919, Uruguayan laws marked a formal distance that led to the calendar of birth holidays being eliminated and replaced by: Family Day.
According to Roger Geymonat, a historian who has researched religiosity in Uruguay, the distance between the Church and the State began to be marked since 1860, when the decision was made to create the decree called “secularization of cemeteries.”
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With this rule, it was decided that the corpses, for reasons of hygiene, would not be transported to the churches to be watched, but would arrive directly to the cemetery.
Although it seems like a barely logical measure, at that time it was a hard blow for the church, which led to harsh confrontations.
Imposition of measures
Since then, measures began to be imposed that increasingly distanced the church from common places. Among these measures were:
- The founding of new convents was prohibited until legislation on the issue was passed.
- Those priests who criticized the authorities or the laws were ordered to be confined in prison, without further formalities.
- There are limitations on the exercise of cemetery worship, prohibiting any episcopal or any other church blessing of sites designated as cemeteries.
- Mandatory civil marriage began, prior to religious marriage.
- In 1905 the divorce bill was introduced.
- A children’s hospital, called Pereira-Rosell, was created under a strictly secular regime.
The measures that were taken were not intended to make the country secular, however, since 1885 a “clerical storm” was unleashed that made the official separation inevitable.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn