Abstract
This article analyzes the cult of the souls in Purgatory in Puerto Berrío, Colombia, and its relationship with the Catholic Church. Through empirical evidence, it identifies three characteristics of this cult, namely, its relative independence from the Catholic Church, its heterogeneity and its utilitarian character, and compares them with other cases of Latin American popular Catholicism. The particularities of the cult enable an analysis of how popular religion, rather than generating a conflict with the Catholic Church, maintains an ambiguous relationship with it. The case shows that popular religion not only incorporates the symbolic structure of the Catholic Church to legitimize itself, but also that the church tolerates it, contributing to the peaceful coexistence of the popular and the institutionalized. Consequently, this leads believers, instead of adhering to a supposed binary opposition, to shift between popular and institutionalized religion.
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