ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the growth, progress and consequent transformations experienced by social Catholic movements and identities since the appearance of the Rerum Novarum encyclical of 1891 until the second half of the twentieth century, marked by the Second Vatican Council and its impact on all aspects of Latin American Catholicism. The impact of the First World War on the Western Hemisphere accelerated economic and social transformations and contributed to the development of both anti-imperialist and Latin American consciousness. The international markets collapsed during the war years and the Latin American countries increased their trade deficits. Once social and political modernization became irreversible, the Catholic Church had little option but to strive to bridge the gap with modernity. In the mid-nineteenth century, Catholicism still had serious difficulties to admit philosophy of individual achievement and universal suffrage in society.
