Canadian English-speaking Catholics, Latin America and the Refugee issue under Trudeau

Abstract

During the period of the Council Vatican II, the Catholic world in Canada underwent profound transformations. From the Sixties onwards, English-speaking Canadian Catholics began to take an interest in social problems and, in particular, the contradictions existing in the South American part of the continent. The new climate of inter-religious dialogue encouraged collaboration between the various Christian groups all committed to non-violence and opponents of war and in favor of social justice in the poorer countries. From 1973 onwards, Canadian society, and the Catholic communities as well, had to face the problem of political refugees coming mostly from Chile and Argentina and take up a position regarding the violence against the civilian population in San Salvador and the new socialist and Christian political experiment in Nicaragua. Thanks to the pages of the Toronto newspaper Catholic New Times it is possible to reconstruct the spirit of that age and, most important, verify the close relationship between the progressive North American Catholic world and the new religious and political projects emerging in Latin America.