Costa Rica: Advances and Retreats in the Process of Secularization between 1884 and 2016

Abstract

The Political Constitution of Costa Rica establishes that Catholicism is the religion of the state (article 75), turning this country into the only remaining confessional state in Latin America. However, a century ago the relationship between the Church and the Costa Rican State was very different: At the end of the 19^th Century, Costa Rica became into one of the first Latin American countries that legalized the divorce and excluded religion from public schools. In order to explain this turn, the article distinguishes three periods in the secularization of the Costa Rican State from 1884 to 2016. The first period begins with the Reform and the anticlerical laws imposed by Liberal governments after 1884. The second period begins with the alliance between the Costa Rican government and the Catholic hierarchy after 1940. Finally, the third period begins in 2009, when a group submitted a bill to eliminate the Confessionality of the Costa Rican state. Following Peter Berger’s conception of desecularization, the article reveals how the secularization process of the Costa Rican state has never been a linear or progressive process. By the contrary, it shows how the Costa Rican process of secularization has been complicated, with advances and retreats.