CHAPTER VII. 



THE CHUKCH AND ITS CEREMONIES. 



EXCLUSIVELY CATHOLIC. INTERFERENCE OF THE ARCHBISHOP IN MARRIAGES WITH PROTESTANTS. HE CLAIMS 

 SPIRITUAL JURISDICTION OVER FOREIGN LEGATIONS. PASSING OF THE HOST THROUGH THE STREETS. BIGOTRY AND 

 INTOLERANCE INSEPARABLE AMONG ALL SECTS. -METROPOLITAN ORGANIZATION. CHURCH REVENUES. PARISHES 

 CONVENT OF AUGUSTIN NUNS. OTHER NUNNERIES. MONASTERIES. THE DOMINICANS. FRANCISCANS. RECOLETA 

 FRANCISCANS. FRANCISCAN HERMITS. MERCEDARIOS (WHITE FRIARS). SACRED HEART. CEREMONIES ON ASH 



WEDNESDAY. DEATH OF A DEAN OF THE CATHEDRAL. EXEQUIES OF DON . INCIDENTS OF HOLY WEEK. 



PALM SUNDAY. HOLY THURSDAY. GOOD FRIDAY. SATURDAY EASTER SUNDAY. QUASIMODO (SUNDAY AFTER 

 EASTER). ANNIVERSARY OF THE EARTHQUAKE OF 1647. CORPUS CHRISTI. ASSUMPTION DAY. SANTA EUSEBIA. 

 ANNIVERSARY OF THE NATIVITY OF THE VIRGIN. OUR LADY OF MERCY. OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY. OUR LADY 

 OF CARMEN. 



The fifth article of the Constitution, sworn and promulgated on the 25th of May, 1833, is in 

 these words: 



"ARTICLES. La religion de la Republica de Chile es la Catolica Apostolica Romana, con 

 esclusion del ejercicio publico de qualquiera otra." (The religion of the Republic of Chile is 

 the Apostolic Roman Catholic, to the exclusion of the public exercise of every other.) 



Acting on the blind policy which dictated the foregoing article of its fundamental law, it was 

 not until the numbers of Protestants at Valparaiso became too powerful to be prudently disre- 

 garded any longer, that they were permitted to occupy a chapel in which they might worship 

 GOD as had been taught them by their fathers, or to possess a piece of ground in which to 

 deposit the remains of mortality. Even these boons, however, were not openly conceded. 

 They were indebted to the liberal sentiments of the sterling patriot then President, General 

 Friere, for authority to make a new reading of the Constitution ; and were told they should 

 have his protection so long as their church and worship were without the external evidences 

 which the words "public exercise" seemed to imply. So intolerant was the church in those 

 days, that burial in consecrated ground was refused the crew of a national ship of war, because 

 they were foreigners, and, primd facie, heretics. But the President, recognising them as citizens 

 of the republic from the moment that they embarked in its service, felt bound to provide a place 

 where dogs and condors would not desecrate their bodies, and directed that they should be 

 interred within the fortress at Valparaiso. It thus became a naval cemetery, in which other 

 strangers also found a final resting-place. The ground which Protestants were subsequently 

 allowed to obtain at the port has obviated further necessity for its use; but at Santiago three 

 foreigners have been deposited within the castle walls of Santa Lucia, and, for many years to 

 come, there the remains of any others must rest whose misfortune it may be to die without the 

 pale of the apostolic Roman Catholic church.* 



The privileges thus winked at were the earliest movements toward breaking down overbearing 

 intolerance; an intolerance which not only shut out young men from domestic life, except 

 through its exclusive portals, but which forced them, bareheaded, to their knees whenever the 

 bell gave warning that the "host" was elevated in church, or a part of the same imaginary 

 body of our Saviour was being conveyed to a sick person through the street they chanced to be 



* Under date June 14th, 1853, a distinguished fellow-countryman wrote me from Santiago: "A party were recently stoned 

 while engaged at midnight in burying a Protestant in the fort on Santa Lucia; and I have just heen informed by the American 

 Consul for Talcahuano, among other such-like acts, that the local authorities of that place refused permission to bury the dead 

 body of an infant, the son of the captain of an American vessel, and that the body was taken to sea." 



