Abstract

CRUZ ESQUIVEL, Juan. "With the compass of Francisco": The Pact of Padua as a political-religious construction in the post-Kirchner Argentina. Soc. relig. [online]. 2017, vol.27, n.48, pp.12-37. ISSN 1853-7081.

The article focuses on the political and religious foundations underlying the Pact of Padua, an initiative of a conglomerate of intendants from Buenos Aires province, Argentina. The agreement aims at implementing the main guidelines of the papal Encyclical Laudato si in their municipal administrations. Two analytical vectors are approached to understand a phenomenon bearing an indissoluble political-religious dynamic. On the one hand, the role of Francis in the Argentine political scene in a lacking context of leadership. On the other hand, the elective affinities and subsidiary cosmologies between Peronism and Catholicism that form a field of overlap and sedimentation of the political-religious tie. As a political-religious construction, the Pact of Padua contributes to reinforce the public presence of the Catholic Church and to institute “religious” as a complementary tool for political accumulation. In that sense, the covenant reproduces historical features that have marked the Argentine political culture, specifically those that have forged an identity and a political praxis invoking institutional and symbolic references of the religious world.

Keywords : Religion; Politics; Pope Francis; Argentina.