The arrival of Pope Leo XIV in Uruguay was not just a protocol event. It was a mirror. A mirror in which thousands of Uruguayans looked and discovered, with some surprise, that they still recognize their own face.
The streets filled up, the stadiums sold out, the squares overflowed. It was not just curiosity. It was something deeper. And that "something more" contradicts one of the most repeated clichés about this country: that Uruguayans are, in essence, a secular, cold people detached from all transcendence.
Uruguay is famous for being the most secular country in Latin America. It is a reputation we have proudly cultivated for over a century. Separation of Church and State, divorce, same-sex marriage, abortion, euthanasia… the list of "progressive" achievements is long and is displayed as a medal.
However, beneath that legal and political surface lies a much more complex cultural reality. Uruguayans are more Catholic than they appear. And the Pope's visit made this evident in a striking way.
It's not just about numbers
According to the latest measurements, around 36% of the population identifies as Catholic. That is already significant in a country where "none" and "I believe in something, but not in the Church" often lead the polls. But Uruguayan Catholicism has never been well measured by surveys.
It is measured by gestures.
By the virgins that appear in the yards of houses in Paso de la Arena, Casavalle, or El Cerro. By the medals of the Virgin of the Thirty-Three that hang from the necks of taxi drivers, police officers, and workers. By the processions that still traverse towns in the interior when no one is watching. By the masses for the deceased that people attend even if they say they are "not practicing."
There is a Uruguayan way of being Catholic that is discreet, almost embarrassed, but persistent. It is the Catholicism of the grandmother who prays the rosary while watching television. The father who hasn’t stepped into a church since his wedding but asks for holy water to be sprinkled on his newborn child. The mother who, although she votes for the Broad Front, still crosses herself when passing in front of a church.
That Catholicism does not make noise. It does not take to the streets to impose anything. But it does not disappear either. The visit of Pope Leo XIV acted as a catalyst for that underground religiosity. Suddenly, people who normally do not talk about faith found themselves discussing the meaning of life, forgiveness, and hope.
The images from Casavalle, Florida, and Centenario showed something that the Montevidean intellectual elites often deny: that there is a deep Uruguay that continues to seek meaning beyond consumption, individualism, and state bureaucracy.
It is no coincidence that the Church has historically been one of the few institutions that reached the most forgotten neighborhoods when the State still did not. Parishes, soup kitchens, Catholic schools, addiction treatment centers, and support for broken families are not a recent invention. They are a constant presence.
The Pope emphasized this with his simple presence in Casavalle: the Church does not need grandiloquent speeches to be close to the poor. It just needs to be.
The eternal detractors
There are those who will try to minimize the impact of the visit. They will say it was a media phenomenon, that people came out of curiosity, that in a few months everything will return to normal. That may be true. But it may also be that this "normality" is no longer as secular as once thought. Every time a Pope visits a country seemingly distant from faith, the same thing happens: a layer of religiosity is revealed that statistics do not fully capture. It has happened in other places. It is happening here.
Uruguay is not Poland or Mexico. It never will be. But it is also not the atheist country that some insist on constructing in school textbooks and official speeches. There is a moral and spiritual reserve that endures. It manifests in funerals, in neighborhood celebrations, in promises to the Virgin, in the way many Uruguayans still speak of "God" when their rational vocabulary runs out.
The arrival of Leo XIV did not convert anyone overnight. That was not the goal. What it did was remind a society too proud of its modernity that there are still questions that the State cannot answer. Questions about the meaning of suffering, about the dignity of the weakest, about hope when everything seems lost.
Uruguayans, in their quiet and sometimes contradictory way, remain more Catholic than they admit. The Pope's visit merely lifted the veil a little. And beneath that veil appeared, once again, that discreet, tenacious, and profoundly human faith that never completely left.
Welcome, Holy Father. And thank you for reminding us who we are.
