Progress Mediated by Parishioners. The National Congress and the National Exhibition of Catholic Missions in Colombia (1924)

Abstract

This article analyzes the National Exhibition of Catholic Missions of 1924, which took place in Bogotá (Colombia), as part of the preparations for the Vatican Exposition of Missions of 1925 convened by Pius XI. In the case of Colombia, the exhibition responded to the discourses of progress of the conservative hegemony of the late 19^th and the early 20^th century, characterized by a rapprochement between the Government and the Catholic Church through the Concordat of 1887. Both the exhibition and the National Congress of Missions were spaces of legitimization of the national project, and sought to justify the continuity of the missionaries’ work throughout the national territory.