LATIN AMERICAN SEMINARY REFORM: MODERNIZATION AND THE PRESERVATION OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

As secular modernization increasingly affected the Catholic Church's moral and legal influence in Latin America in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, ecclesiastical leaders moved to strengthen the institutional Church. To do so, they found a strategy in the concept of modernization itself, and their efforts focused on the professionalization of the clergy, particularly through seminary reform. The papacy, Latin American bishops, and seminary administrators implemented curricular and disciplinary reforms, particularly from European models, to improve the number and quality of the clergy and thus defend the Church against the rise of liberal secularism, albeit with mixed results.