God Is Argentinean, and Also the Pope!” Catholicism, Popular Religion and the National Imagination

The arrival of Jorge Bergoglio to the Holy See has introduced a number of changes in the relations between the Catholic Church and the State in Argentina. While traditionally, these relations have been characterized by the preferential status of Catholicism as quasi-official religion and its active presence in the government's decisions, in the last decade it was noticeable a succession of conflicts between the Church and State. However, few days after the coronation of Pope Francisco, government discourse changed radically, emphasizing the importance of having "a Argentinean Pope." The media and various forms of popular expression (graffiti, jokes, cartoons, montages on Facebook, etc.) express how unprecedented and unexpected this situation was, from a key that combines various representations of national culture.

In this new picture, the traditional and conservative homology between Argentina national identity and Catholicism, aquires new features, especially at the level of popular religion.

In this work, I will observe a specific matrix that allows to relate to the sacred and the idea of nation: soccer. Soccer appears as one of the matrixes that model the relationships with the sacred: not as metalanguage, nor as religious metaphor, but anchored in the specific experiences and particular semantics and their influence on the imagination of the nation and of religion. Soccer, as a matrix, helps us to problematize hegemonic definitions of religion and national identity.