Abstract

PEREZ SALAZAR, Juan Óscar. Religious modernity, pastoral cultural action and international Catholic cooperation in Medellín, 1959-1969. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2022, vol.45, n.1, pp.45-68.  Epub Dec 27, 2023. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v45n1.90235.

This article analyzes how Medellín became a transnational contact zone for the Catholic Church, through the study of the ways the international Catholic cooperation and pastoral cultural action promoted by the aggiornamento of the Catholic Church from the Vatican were translated into face the growing phenomenon of religious modernity in Latin America in the local context. To this end, the Great Mission of 1961 and the creation of the Pastoral Secretariat of the Archdiocese of Medellín (Sepam) are described as transnational contact zones par excellence that allow understanding the complex dynamics of global North-South exchange and vice versa as interdependent spheres, which seeks to transcend the national or local vision of these phenomena, from the approach of transnational history. Religious modernity defined as the continuous process of transformation of the Latin American religious field, that forces the ecclesiastical institution to update its structures and strategies of evangelization, represents the propitious framework proposed in this article to understand the relevance of the Second Vatican Council and its application in local contexts. In a national context marked by intransigence and the resistance of the ecclesiastical hierarchies to the reformism proposed by the council and the Latin American Episcopal Conference held in Medellín in 1968, the case of the Archdiocese of Medellín represents a milestone of updating to the new winds of exchange proposed from Rome. The article concludes with the main contributions of international cooperation and techno-pastoral action in the local context, in a dynamic of exchanges between the European and Latin American clergy, that envisions the beginnings of profound transformations within the universal Catholic Church that we live until today. For this research, a combination of oral (interviews) and written sources was used, related to the Archdiocese of Medellín and personal writings of priests of that time.

Keywords : Catholicism; international cooperation; Medellín; modernization; Vatican Council II.

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