ABSTRACT
This article analyses the policies of the Holy See in view of the creation of the Indian Protection Service (SPI) and the indigenous legislation of the brazilian government, which intended to exclude the participation of religious institutions, and in view of the denunciations about Putumayo, in Peru. In this context, the Catholic Church, the State and the positivists fought for the protection and management of indigenous populations, for financial resources and for the support of public opinion. At the centre of the debates were the SPI, the Salesian missions, Marshal Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon and Father Antônio Maria Malan. The offensives of the Holy See sought to ensure the defence of the interests of the Catholic Church and the support and collaboration of the State and, to this end, sought the support of sectors of the Government, of Catholic politicians or sympathisers in order to disarticulate the SPI and its ideological enemies. Other strategies were to promote institutional expansion, favoring religious control of the population and ecclesiastical territory, through the creation of religious missions and ecclesiastical circumscriptions in regions where there was a large concentration of indigenous populations and the interiorization of religious. The sources were obtained from the Vatican Apostolic Archives and from the Archives of the Sacred Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Works.
Keywords:
Catholic Church; Holy See; Indian Protection Service; Salesians; Apostolic Nunciature