National Catholicism
National Catholicism (Spanish: nacionalcatolicismo) was part of the ideological identity of Francoism, the political system through which the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco governed the Spanish State between 1939 and 1975.[3] Its most visible manifestation was the hegemony that the Catholic Church had in all aspects of public and private life.[3] As a symbol of the ideological divisions within Francoism, it can be contrasted to national syndicalism (Spanish: nacionalsindicalismo), an essential component of the ideology and political practice of the Falangists. HistoryThe invention of the term is attributed to the Jesuit and historian Alfonso Álvarez Bolado, who gave the term a scientific nuance and whose articles were compiled by the publishing house Cuadernos para el Diálogo in 1976,[4] before, the term was used more informally. In France, a similar model of National Catholicism was advanced by the Fédération Nationale Catholique formed by General Édouard Castelnau.[5] Although it reached one million members in 1925, it was of short-lived significance, subsiding into obscurity by 1930.[6] In Spain, the Francoist State initiated a project in 1943 to reform the university. It was called the University Regulatory Law (U.R.L.), which remained active until 1970.[7]
In the 1930s and 1940s, Ante Pavelić's Croatian Ustaše movement espoused a similar ideology,[8] although it has been called other names, including "political Catholicism" and "Catholic Croatism".[9] Other countries in central and eastern Europe where similar movements of Francoist inspiration combined Catholicism with nationalism include Austria, Poland, Lithuania and Slovakia.[10] See also
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