Public visibility, “new evangelization” and multiculturalism in the religious patrimony of the city of Buenos Aires

Abstract

This article, focused on Argentinean Catholicism, deals with the relationship between patrimony and religious visibility. Therefore, it explores and analyzes the tension between the meanings ascribed to religious objects whose patrimonial value is recognized both by the church and the state. For this purpose, the article first discusses the pastoral meaning of ecclesiastic goods from the point of view of a new evangelization. Secondly, it addresses the state’s recognition of all confessional expressions inspired by the spirit of a multicultural society that is characterized by cultural and religious diversity. Finally, it examines some of the instances of visibility of the religious patrimony in the public sphere and their relation with the social legitimacy of the institutional subjects of patrimonialization. In this sense it highlights the role of rituals of visitation and the link between Catholicism and culture, which refers to the church-state contradiction about the real hierarchy of these dimensions.

Key words: patrimony, religion, visibility, multiculturalism, Catholicism.