The Basilica of the National Vow: Expansion and Restoration Strategies of the Globalized Catholic Church. Quito: 1870-1930’s.”

Abstract

This essay goes beyond traditional historiography centered mainly in the stylistic problematic, and it pretends to lay down the political and religious strategies in which the Ecuadorian Catholic Church -despite the crisis- intervened symbolically and materially in the setting of the modern city, between 1870 and the 1930´s, particularly in Quito. In order to illustrate this complex process, I center my proposal starting with the concordat established between the Ecuadorian Estate and the Holy Seat, and the detonating presence and action of the reformed European religious congregations, and others originated in our country, related to the re-semantized worship the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The most visible materialization of this phenomenon is the construction of the monumental Neogothic Basílica del Voto Nacional and its surrounding buildings, quarters, gardens and plazas, in Quito, which was intended to seal the political peace and become a spiritual guide (faro or lighthouse) at 3 scales: from Quito to its own inhabitants, from Quito to the rest of Ecuador, from Ecuador to Europe, within its strategies of expansion of the French “Restoration” and Catholic Revival.