Fortunes and misfortunes of the redemptorist missionary Pedro Celestino Lopez in the Garcia Moreno’s Ecuador, 1870-1875: a revealing case

Abstract

Th is text addresses some of the vicissitudes experienced by the Redemptorist missionaries in Ecuador during Garcia Moreno’s second government, 1869-1875. Th e disagreement of one father with the very Catholic president exposes internal predicaments of the Ecuadorian Church within an unsettled and divided Catholic universe, and uncovers how such unrest was associated to the political world in a republic where both spheres were closely related. Th ese links, not quite harmonious between religion and politics, were also infl uenced by regional conflicts and a complex reelection conjunction, a decisive option for directing the nation toward liberalism or Catholicism. Th e sacred ark of faith, —the model nation shaped by the Garcia’s “providential” figure, where Catholicism, modernity and civilization merged— faced setbacks toward the middle of the 1870s. The study is based on periodical publications that complement and question the information
derived from documents found in the Historical Archive of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (AGHR), consulted in secondary sources.