«El espíritu de asociación católica lo está invadiendo todo» Joaquín Larraín Gandarillas en Estados Unidos (1851–1852)

Abstract

American Catholicism was a model for the Catholic Church in the Latin American republics during the expansion and Romanization that it experienced in the second half of the 19th century. However, there has been little research explicitly investigating this relationship to date. This study analyzes the impressions of the Chilean priest Joaquín Larraín Gandarillas during his stay in the United States between September 1851 and June 1852. The article is based mainly on Larraín's unpublished correspondence with the archbishop of Santiago, Rafael Valdivieso, and the future bishop of Concepción, Hipólito Salas, both available in the Government Collection of the Historical Archive of the Archbishopric of Santiago. It is argued that, in Larraín's perspective, the most attractive feature of American Catholicism was its associations, which, once transplanted in Chile, could act as a barrier to stop expansion of revolutionary ideas, which in 1851 provoked the most severe political crisis since Independence.