Highly secularized Uruguay prepares to welcome Pope Leo XIV
Uruguay is preparing to welcome Pope Leo XIV, whose visit will coincide with the feast of Our Lady of the Thirty-Three and be the first papal visit since St. John Paul II’s in 1987. Cardinal Daniel Sturla said Uruguay’s long history of secularization sets it apart in Latin America; a recent survey found 33% identify as Catholic, while 28% identify as atheist or agnostic. Despite the country’s secular character, Church and state are coordinating the welcome, and Sturla said the visit will be civic in dimension but primarily pastoral. Sturla described the small Uruguayan Church as continuing its work across the country and highlighted the pope’s planned visit to the impoverished Borro neighborhood in Montevideo.
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Pope Leo XIV is expected in Uruguay in about a week, as a country where only a minority identify as Catholic prepares to welcome him. The visit is drawing anticipation beyond the Catholic population and will combine civic events with a pastoral focus, including a stop in a poor Montevideo neighborhood. 1
The visit will coincide with the feast of Our Lady of the Thirty-Three, Uruguay’s patroness, and will be the first papal visit to the country since St. John Paul II visited in 1987. For many Uruguayans, it will be their first experience of a papal visit. 1
Cardinal Daniel Sturla, archbishop of Montevideo, described Uruguay as an exception in predominantly Catholic Latin America, citing more than a century of intense secularization. He said the latest survey found that 33% of Uruguayans identify as Catholic, 28% believe in God without belonging to a religious group, 11% follow other religions, and 28% are agnostic or atheist; he cautioned that survey results should be treated carefully. 1
The country’s separation of church and state took a particularly strong form in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Uruguay has no official religious holidays or religious symbols in public institutions; Holy Week is commonly called “Tourism Week,” Christmas “Family Day,” and presidents do not swear their oaths on the Bible. 1
Despite the country’s secular character, the Church and state are working together to receive Leo XIV. Sturla said the president traveled to Rome to invite the pope, and that the Church has freedom to operate, although it has often been pushed to the margins. 1
Sturla described the Church as “poor and free, small and beautiful,” saying it continues its work throughout the country. He said the visit will have a civic dimension but will be primarily pastoral, and that the pope is expected to be welcomed with affection. 1
A central stop will be the Borro neighborhood in the Casavalle area of Montevideo, described by Sturla as a very poor district and a place with a particularly strong concentration of Catholic Church activity. At Our Lady of Guadalupe parish and nearby sites, he said, about 20 Catholic initiatives operate within a few blocks, including parishes, chapels, and social projects. 1
Those projects address housing, education, care for older people, and vocational training. Sturla characterized them as a tangible and active presence in the community. 1
Sturla said interest in the visit extends beyond Catholics: surveys indicate that 60% of Uruguayans are very hopeful about it, and he reported virtually no opposition to the pope’s arrival. Uruguay has a population of about 3.5 million, nearly half of whom live in Montevideo. 1*
The Church’s pastoral mission amid secularization and religious pluralism
The Church’s pastoral mission amid secularization and religious pluralism is neither to retreat from public life nor to impose a sacralized social order. It is to proclaim Christ faithfully, accompany people with charity, and discern how the Gospel can be communicated within changing cultures. This requires distinguishing legitimate secularization from secularism, engaging pluralism through dialogue without dissolving Christian identity, and grounding pastoral activity in prayer, holiness, and credible witness.
“Secularization” can describe the recognition that temporal realities—including society and human freedom—have their own proper order. Pope Francis cautions that this need not conflict with faith: the Church should not treat every reduction in its former social influence as a threat or imply that it longs for a past in which religious authorities held greater power. The more serious danger is secularism, a view that severs human life from its relationship with the Creator and treats God as irrelevant. This can foster forms of practical atheism in which consumption, pleasure, power, or discrimination become dominant values.
This distinction matters pastorally. If Christians condemn secularization indiscriminately, they risk confusing the Gospel with a particular social arrangement. But if they accept secularism as though faith were merely a private preference, they fail to bear witness to the Christian understanding that human dignity and life find their fullest meaning in relation to God. The Church’s task is therefore not to block cultural change, but to ensure that faith in Christ is communicated within cultures as they change.
Pluralism describes the presence of diverse religious and cultural convictions in society. It challenges Christians to understand their neighbors and to speak in ways they can hear. John Paul II commended the effort to know contemporary society so that the enduring Gospel might be expressed in fitting language. He also warned that pluralism, if misunderstood, can weaken the unity and integrity of the faith. Yet it can become an occasion for deeper reflection when Christians remain faithfully attached to Christ and the Church.
Dialogue is therefore not a substitute for evangelization or a reason to obscure what is distinctive about Christianity. The Church’s engagement with other religions and spiritual movements calls for both openness and discernment: local communities should study their cultures and consider which customs and practices can help Christianity take root, while clearly identifying what is specifically Christian. A renewed interest in spirituality may open genuine pastoral opportunities, but it can also be ambiguous—sometimes expressing a search for meaning, sometimes lacking commitment to God or communion with the Church.
The point is not to treat people of other convictions as enemies, nor to pretend that religious differences do not matter. Christians are called to listen respectfully, cooperate where possible, and present the Gospel honestly. The Church’s mission remains directed to all, including the baptized, those who do not believe, and those who are indifferent or mistaken in their beliefs.
The Church’s mission cannot be reduced to a specialized program delegated to a few experts. It belongs to the whole Church and takes place through catechesis, teaching, liturgy, family life, parish activity, and the witness of ecclesial communities. The vitality of that mission depends on a community whose own life is rooted in the Gospel. Prayer, the Sunday Eucharist, reconciliation, attention to grace, and listening to and proclaiming the Word are not optional supports added to mission; they form the spiritual life from which mission proceeds.
Pope Francis makes the importance of witness especially clear:
“the Gospel needs to be proclaimed if we are to communicate the joy of faith to today’s men and women. Yet this proclamation is not primarily a matter of words, but of a witness abounding with gratuitous love”
This does not mean that words or teaching are unnecessary. The same passage calls for proclamation, while emphasizing that Christian words become credible through a life marked by generous love, hope, trust, and integrity. A parish that teaches the faith but fails to embody charity weakens its witness; service detached from Christ and the Gospel, on the other hand, can lose the specific purpose of the Church’s mission. The aim is an integrated witness in which proclamation, worship, community life, and service illuminate one another.
Pastoral mission requires adapting its methods, not altering the faith. The Church’s pastoral guidance teaches that different circumstances call for different ways of reaching people, while doctrine itself is not to be changed to fit the audience. This principle avoids two errors: repeating inherited forms without regard for whether people can understand them, and diluting Christian teaching in the hope of making it more acceptable.
This work includes careful catechesis and serious attention to local cultures. Religious ignorance can leave people vulnerable to confusion or to combinations of Christian belief with incompatible religious ideas. The Church is therefore called to evangelize in ways that meet people’s real circumstances—including those of the poor and excluded, indigenous cultures, and rapidly changing urban communities. At the same time, it must recognize and preserve what is good in local cultures rather than impose a uniform cultural style.
The mission also has a public and social dimension. The Church’s defense of human dignity, preferential concern for the poor, and work for solidarity are part of its response to cultures marked by injustice and exclusion. It can cooperate with people of good will to build a society more worthy of the human person, while resisting practices that subordinate the weak or erase the value of local cultures. Such service does not replace the announcement of Christ; it makes the Gospel’s concern for the human person visible in society.
Secularization and pluralism are real challenges, but not merely threats. Secularized cultures may retain values such as solidarity, freedom, justice, and concern for others, even while losing awareness of their deeper religious foundations. A renewed search for spirituality can reveal a hunger for meaning, though it calls for discernment and an invitation to a fuller encounter with Christ. These circumstances call for pastoral imagination: new languages and forms of expression, renewed attention to essentials, and communities whose life makes the Gospel believable.
In practice, this means listening before assuming what people believe; teaching the faith clearly and accessibly; engaging other religious communities respectfully; forming Catholics who can distinguish Christian faith from vague religiosity; and making prayer, worship, and holiness the heart of pastoral planning. It also means refusing both nostalgia for lost influence and resignation to the idea that faith has no place in public life. The Church’s mission is to bring Christ’s Gospel into human cultures through truthful proclamation, dialogue, and love—without confusing respectful engagement with relativism or fidelity with hostility.
The central pastoral principle is fidelity expressed through discernment: remain clear about Christ and the Church while adapting the manner of encounter to the people and cultures being served. The Church can meet secularized and religiously plural societies not by retreating or compromising, but by witnessing to the Gospel in a way that is intelligible, charitable, and rooted in living faith.