| This work analyzes the political options that some influential Chilean Catholics chose from the late 1930s to the late 1960s. This is a study of the joint trajectory of some prominent clerical figures and some political leaders. A political history is intertwined with an ecclesiastical history, reflecting both the Vatican and Latin American hierarchies and also influential voices of Chilean clerics. This is also a history of how ideas influenced the actions and options of Chilean Catholics, and how they expressed themselves in the Chilean political scene. In political terms, it is about a trajectory toward the left, a trajectory that begins in the Conservative Party, passes through Social Christianity and the reformist Christian Democratic party, and ends in the left-wing Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitario or MAPU of Salvador Allende's Popular Unity coalition. |
