Concordat, Concordat…

Church-State relations in the

Portuguese Empire, 1940-74
Eric Morier-Genoud
Queen’s University Belfast

“Concordat, Concordat… Church-State relations in the Portuguese Empire, 1940-74” in

Jairzinho Lopes Pereira (ed.), Church-State Relations in Africa in the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries. Mission, Empire, and the Holy See, London: Palgrave Macmillan (coll. Cambridge
Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies), 2022, pp.111-134

Abstract
The Vatican and the Portuguese state signed in 1940 a Concordat and Missionary Accord that
defined the way church-state relations should operate in the colonies. Many analysts have used
these agreements and the Concordat in particular, as a way to characterise church-state relation
in the Portuguese empire. The present chapter questions the validity of relying on a legal text
to understand and capture the reality of such relations. To analyse the subject afresh, it
investigates the reasons why these agreements came about, the ways the agreements were
practiced in the Portuguese colonies, and explores the way these agreements were altered over
time and eventually terminated in 1975. Such approach offers a richer and novel understanding
of what went on in the relation between church and state in the Portuguese Empire between
1940 and 1975 and it allows a new characterisation of these relations.

On 7 May 1940, the Portuguese government and the Holy See signed a Concordat and
Missionary Accord to regulate the relations between church and state in Portugal and its
colonies. This was an event that most scholars see today as a turning point in church-state
relations, as well as the cradle of a deep alliance, if not fusion, between church and state in the
Third Portuguese empire. This idea of deep alliance, if not fusion, is so common, in fact, that
many authors use the term Concordat as a shorthand to describe what took place between church
and state after 1940 in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and other smaller colonies. The
only element of debate relates to who benefitted most from this alliance – the Catholic
institution or the government in Lisbon? Further, not only would this alliance have been deep,
but it would also have been immutable until independence, even if scholars acknowledge that
more and more actors began to question the agreement after the start of the liberation struggles
in the African Portuguese overseas territories.
Characterising church-state relation in the Portuguese Third Empire with the Concordat
is problematic for several reasons. First, the Concordat and Missionary Accord may have be
complementary, but they are not the same. The Missionary accord applied only in the colonies
where it established a different religious regime than in metropolitan Portugal. Second, many
authors use the Concordat as a raccourci to characterize church-state relation during the whole
Third Portuguese empire. Yet this agreements and its complementary Missionary Accord only
covered 35 years – and one cannot consider the years before 1940 as a crescendo toward to
these arrangements in some teleological way. Third, for all its importance, the Concordat and
Missionary Accord were “only” legal documents. Yet, as any serious social scientist knows,
law and reality are different, so one cannot characterise reality with a legal document. One
needs instead to look at how the agreements were implemented and what they resulted in. In
sum, we badly need to revisit the question of the 1940 Concordat and Missionary Accord if we
are to understand and characterise properly the relation between church and state in the Third
Portuguese Empire.
The present chapter engages in an encompassing analysis of the Concordat and
Missionary Accord as a way to explore the nature and dynamics of the relation between the
Catholic Church and the colonial state in the Third Portuguese Empire. Based on archival work
in Lisbon and Mozambique, the chapter revisits the origins of the international accords between
Lisbon and the Holy See, it looks at the impact these accords had on the ground in praxis, and
it investigates how some reforms were attempted and how the accords eventually came to an
end. The analysis is biased towards Mozambique, because this is my primary fieldwork but also
because this is where many of the “problems” in the relation between church and state emerged.
This caveat posited, the chapter aims at revealing a more complex picture of the subject at large
(covering Angola and other colonies) as well as characterising more precisely and adequately
the “religious regime” which existed in the Portuguese empire in the 20th Century.

The origins of the Concordat

Most authors see the Concordat and Missionary Accord as relating only to the years after 1940.
They see the agreements as opening and characterising a historical period of “high colonialism”
in the Portuguese colonies of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and smaller territories
(Cape Verde, São Tome e Principe, Goa, Daman, and Diu). Authors usually do not investigate
the origins of the Concordat and Missionary Accord and the reasons these international
agreements came about. I do not just mean that authors do not investigate the background of
these agreements, but also do not try to understand what problems these agreements aimed at
resolving and what historical period they aimed at closing. Indeed, if the Concordat and
Missionary Accord constitute a program for what was hoped would come after 1940, they were
just as importantly a tool to resolve and surpass problems perceived in need of resolution during
the previous period. While I will look at the agreements as program in the next section, I
investigate below why the Portuguese state and the Vatican felt they needed to establish such
international agreements to resolve issues existing before 1940. As we will see, it has much to
do with the long and deep crisis between church and state that began in mid-18th century.
While the Catholic church had deployed successful missionary activity in Asia and
Africa in the 16th and 17th century, particularly in India, the Congo and along the Zambezi
rivers,1 the Church began to decline in the Portuguese colonies in the 18th Century. This came
principally because of anticlericalism in Europe, a first defining moment coming with the
arrival to power of the Marquis of Pombal. The Marquis was a modern and authoritarian
political leader who, in relation to the Church, engaged in a policy of strong regalism, i.e. an

1
John K. Thornton, ‘The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo’, Journal of
African History, Vol. 25, No. 2 (1984), pp. 147-167; John K. Thornton, ‘The Kingdom of Kongo and the
Counter Reformation’, Social Sciences and Missions, Vol. 26, No. 1, 2013, pp. 40-58 and José Capela,
Donas, Senhores e Escravos (Porto: Afrontamento, 1995), pp.160-177.
attempt for the state to control the Church.2 After years of harassment, Pombal ended up
expelling the Jesuits from Portugal in 1759 and had their property nationalised.3 Soon after,
under pressure from Portugal as well as France and Spain, the Pope extinguished the Jesuit
society altogether in 1773. Anticlericalism grew further and Catholic decline ensued in the early
19th Century with the Napoleonic invasions, followed by the Portuguese liberal revolutions that
led to a breaking of diplomatic relation between Lisbon and the Vatican, and the prohibition of
religious congregations in Portugal in the 1820s and 1830s.4 The Church in Portugal ended up
de-structured in the mid-19th Cneutyr, with 368 convents closed out of a total of 535 and the
number of religious priests declining dramatically.5 Religious congregations were expelled
from the colonies too (the Dominicans after the Jesuits) and the Catholic Church reached its
nadir overseas in the same period;6 in Mozambique, there was no Prelate left in the country in
1822 and a mere four priests active in 1855 in a territory as large as France and Spain together.7
What turned out to be a “long anti-clerical century”, traumatising the church for
decades, came to an end in 1851 with the coming to power, via a coup d’état, of the Duke
Saldanha. Drawing from “a tradition of aristocratic military politicians”,8 the Duke put an end
to the liberal revolutions and opened an era known in Portuguese history as the “Age of
Regeneration”. The monarchy was restored and Lisbon rapidly began to work at restoring good
relations with the church. During the crisis the Vatican had, among others, responded to
Portugal’s attack by undermining after 1831 the Padroado, thus undermining the historical
rights of the Portuguese crown to direct the church in Asia. After 1851 Rome and Lisbon saw
their relation improve again and a first Concordat was signed in 1857, the agreement confirming
the Padroado while reducing it to the patriarchate of Goa and four dioceses of Asia.9 Relations
between Rome and Lisbon improved further subsequently and the church regained strength in
the Portuguese colonies.10 New congregations made their way to the colonies where they
opened new mission stations and even seminaries, leading to the number of converts starting to
grown again. This did not last, however, as anti-clericalism returned with a vengeance in 1910.
In that year, Republicans came to power in Lisbon, with a strong anticlerical agenda. They
passed anti-clerical laws, expelled the Jesuits, and banned other congregations’ activities as
well as the use of religious dress (among others).11 In April 1911, the state also passed a “law
of separation” which terminated the regime of Concordat in place since 1886. The new
framework was again one of strong regalism, aiming at submitting the church to the state, and
cutting the Catholic Church’s link from the Vatican. The Catholic hierarchy tried to resist and
it countered attacks with pastoral letters and correspondence with civil authorities, if with few

2
Charles C. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborn Empire, 1415-1825 (London: Penguin, 1969), p.180.
3
David Brimingham, A concise history of Portugal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp.79-92
4
Vítor Neto, O Estado, a Igreja e a Sociedade em Portugal (1831-1911) (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional Casa da
Moeda, 1998).
5
Fernando Taveira da Fonseca, ‘Demografia Eclesiástica. II. Do século XVI aos inícios do século XX’ in
Carlos Moreira Azevedo (dir.), Dicionário de História Religiosa de Portugal, vol.2 (C-I), (Lisbon: Centro de
Estudos História Religiosa da Universidade Católica & Circulo de Leitores, 2000), p.53.
6
Philippe Denis, The Dominican Friars in Southern Africa. A social history (1577-1990) (Leiden: Brill, 1998),
p.63
7
Dom António Barroso (Bispo de Himeria), Padroado de Portugal em África. Relatório da Prelazia de
Moçambique (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1895), pp.25-26.
8
David Birmingham, A Concise history of Portugal, op.cit., ch.4
9
Claude Prudhomme, ‘Mission Catholiques et padroado portugais. Pour de nouvelles approches’, Histoire,
Monde & Cultures Religieuses, 31 (2014), pp.17-34 and António da Silva Rego, Le Patronage portugais de
l’Orient. Aperçu historique (Lisbon: Agência Geral do Ultramar, 1957).
10
Vitor Neto, O estado, A Igreja, op.cit., ch.3 and Manuel Braga da Cruz, ‘A Igreja e o Estado. III. Epoca
Contemporânea’ in Carlos Moreira Azevedo (dir.), Dicionário de História Religiosa de Portugal, vol.2 (C-I),
op.cit., pp.401-411.
11
J.M. Sardica, ‘A ‘questão religiosa’ durante a I República’, op.cit., p.44
results. In June 1911 the Portuguese authorities demanded that all Catholic clergy and hierarchy
made a declaration of “formal and unconditional” adherence to the Republic.12 In the colonies,
the situation of the Church was less dramatic as several colonial governors refused to apply part
or all of the anti-clerical laws and because parts of the colonies were run by Chartered
companies who had a margin of action in religious matters.13
Anti-clericalism began to wane in Portugal after the military coup of Sidónio Pais in
September 1917. The new government annulled most anticlerical measures within weeks and,
in 1919, took measures favourable to the church in the colonies (in view of imperial necessities).
It decided to subsidise the Catholic institution in Africa while demanding it to engage in a
“civilising mission”, i.e. to work at the Portugalisation of the colonies and its people (language,
culture, etc.). In 1921 the government promulgated an additional decree which gave precisions
to the “civilizing mission” which the Church had to engage in. In 1926, a coup d’état in Lisbon
brought new military officers to power who chose to ally with Catholic leaders. As a result, a
new regime came into force that worked at restoring further its good relations with the Catholic
Church. It soon attributed an “Organic Status” to the catholic institution in the colonies and
allowed it to re-open seminaries in Portugal. Religious orders returned to both Portugal and the
colonies, and thus the church began to expand anew.14 That was the beginning of the end of
almost a century of anti-clericalism which had deeply traumatised the Church in Portugal and
its colonies.
In the late 1920s, the new pro-Catholic regime (soon to be led by António Salazar)
decided to try to settle the “religious question”. Negotiations began between Lisbon and Rome
and accords were signed in 1928 and in 1929 prolonging some prerogatives of the State in
relation to the Padroado as well as giving more social space to the Catholic institution in
Portugal.15 In 1929 negotiations started to establish a Concordat and Missionary Accord – a
broad agreement on the functioning of church and state and their respective spheres of
competence and exclusivity. Giving up its hard-line policy in relation to the Padroado after a
new Pope was elected, the church looked for a compromise with the Portuguese state involving
a legal recognition of the Church, freedom for proselytism for its missionaries, and state
support. On its side, the state wanted to keep what was left of the Padroado (and keep
Propaganda Fide at bay)16, integrate the Catholic institution into the regime’s authoritarian
national hegemonic quest, and ensure the Church would not engage in politics.17 The situation
of the institution in the colonies was a very important element in the discussions. The Vatican
refused to sign a Concordat separate from, or before, the Missionary Accord. The Vatican and
Lisbon eventually signed these agreements together as a combined set in May 1940 after eleven
years of negotiations. It was the closure of a very turbulent century of church state relation in

12
V. Neto, O Estado, a Igreja, op.cit., ch.6 and J.M. Sardica, ‘A ‘questão religiosa’ durante a I República’,
op.cit., p.45-46
13
For the case of Mozambique, see Eric Morier-Genoud, ‘The Vatican vs. Lisbon. The relaunching of the
Catholic Church in Mozambique, ca. 1875-1940’, Basler Afrika Bibliographien Working Papers, 4 (200) and
Michel Cahen, ‘L’État Nouveau et la diversification religieuse au Mozambique, 1930-1974. I. Le résistible
essor de la portugalisation catholique (1930-1961)’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines, 158 (2000), p.315.
14
H. Pinto Rema, ‘A actividade missiónaria de Portugal’, op.cit., p.263.
15
Manuel Braga da Cruz, ‘O Estado Novo e a Igreja Católica’, in Fernando Rosas (ed.), Portugal e o Estado
Novo (1930-1969) (Lisbon: Editorial Presença, 1992), p.204 and António Leite, ‘Enquadramento legal da
actividade missiónaria portuguesa’, Bróteria (Lisbon), vol.133, n°1, July 1991, p.51.
16
Salazar saw Propaganda Fide as showing ‘a sort of imperialism on the part of the church against the
nationalism of states in colonial matters’ – cited in Manuel Braga da Cruz, O Estado Novo e a Igreja
Católica (Lisbon: Bizâncio, 1999, collection ‘Torre de Babel’), p.62
17
Rita Carvalho, ‘Salazar e a Concordata com a Santa Sé’, História (nova série), 31 (1997), pp.4-15; Bruno
Reis, Salazar eo Vaticano (Lisbon: ICS, 2006); and Rita Carvalho, A Concordata de Salazar. Portugal-Santa
Sé, 1940, PhD thesis, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2009.
Portugal. In the words of the Catholic Bishops, these accords finally brought “religious peace”
back to Portugal.18

The Concordat as program

Concordats were a common type of international agreements between states and the Holy See
in the early 20th Century. The Holy See signed no less than 28 Concordats in the early 20th
Century – with Spain, Italy, Poland, Germany, Romania, etc.19 Hence there is nothing unique
or remarkable about the Portuguese state and the Vatican signing a Concordat in 1940 to
regulate their relations. What is singular in the case of the Portuguese Concordat is that the
agreement was more favourable to the state than the Church – much more than the Italian or
German agreements, it seems.20 Second, the Concordat was tied, quite uniquely, to a Missionary
Accord which specified extra rules and regulations for the Portuguese empires. Both
agreements were signed together, as we noted earlier, and the state viewed the two agreements
as “complementary”, making it one set of regulations for the whole Portuguese world.21
What program did the 1940 Concordat lay out? In Portugal, the international agreement
established, in 31 articles, an “agreed separation” (“separação concordata”) between church and
state. On the one hand, it was a separation, not a fusion – it could not be otherwise since the
Constitution established a separation between church and state. On the other hand, it was an
agreed separation and not a unilateral separation, as the Portuguese Corporative Chambers
noted in May 1940 when it discussed and voted the agreement, meaning it was a friendly
separation on the basis of an agreement over some fundamental joint objectives. The agreement
established that church and state were to operate separately along defined spheres: the church
would not enter in politics and the state would give freedom and some benefits to the Church,
particularly in the colonies. Salazar declared after the signature of the Concordat that the accord
was “not the precarious conciliation of two enemy forces”, but rather “the confident conjunction
of efforts for a work which corresponds to the vocation of Portugal in the world and its main
historical orientation”.22 This was particularly true in the colonies where, thanks to the
Missionary Accord, Catholic missions were to look after the education and health of all
Africans and it would do so in a nationalist way.
The Concordat established a program in details. First, it posited the continuation of the
Padroado that represented a degree of regalism overseas and was most important for the state
– its prestige, international projection, and control of the Church beyond its colonies. Second,
it gave the Church a juridical personality, something the Catholic institution had lost with the
1910 revolution. On the oter hand, the state was not to give any compensation to the Church

18
Anuário Católico de Portugal 1941, (Lisbon: n/ed, 1940), p.405.
19
While Concordat went out of fashion after World War II, they have made a comeback in the late 20th century.
Mozambique signed a Concordat with the Vatican in 2012, Cabo Verde in 2013, and Angola is negotiating
one. See ‘Concordata entre Cabo Verde e Vaticano: Preto no Branco 10 Junho 2013’, A Semana, 10 June
2013 (online at http://www.asemana.publ.cv/?Concordata-entre-Cabo-Verde-e-Vaticano-Preto-no-Branco,
visited 10 April 2018). For Angola, see ‘Angola poderá ter uma Concordata com a Santa-Sé’, O Apostolado,
01 May 2014 (online at http://apostoladoangola.org/angola-podera-ter-uma-concodada-com-a-santa-se/
(visited 10 April 2018) and ‘Angola e Vaticano preparam acordo’, Jornal de Angola, 10 January 2018, online
at http://jornaldeangola.sapo.ao/politica/angola_e_vaticano_preparam_acordo (visited 10 April 2018)
20
Rita Carvalho, A Concordata de Salazar. Portugal-Santa Sé, 1940, op.cit., p.507.
21
Cited in Bernhard Josef WENZEL, Portugal und der Heilige Stuhl. Das Portuguesische Konkordats- und
Missionsrecht. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Missions und Völkerrechtswissenchaft (Lisbon: Âgencia Geral
do Ultramar, 1958), p.359. This translation and all those which follow have been done by the author.
22
Cited in Silas Cerqueira, ‘L’église catholique portugaise.’ in Marcel Merle (ed.) Les églises chrétiennes et la
décolonisation (Paris: Armand Colin, 1967), p.491
for the 1910 nationalisations of its properties (except in the colonies). Third, the agreement
established that the Church would be free to act as it wished in its realm, and it allowed it to
reopen its seminaries to train priests. Additionally, the agreement stated that the state
recognized Catholic marriages, thus creating a legal dualism in relation to weddings (both state
and church weddings were recognized). As to education, article 21 stated it was be guided by
the principles of the Christian doctrine and morals, and that it had to include classes in moral
and religious education. On its side, the Catholic Church agreed not to engage in politics,
particularly in the Catholic Action which was of particular concern to the state. It also accepted
that all Bishops would be of Portuguese nationality only, and that the state had a droit de regard
in the nomination of Bishops to ensure there were “not political”. The Vatican was to submit
its choices of bishop to the Portuguese state and the latter would approve (or refuse) the choices
made.23
In the colonies, the Concordat applied, but many extra regulations came with the
Missionary Accord. In effect, the latter aimed at establishing a different religious regime in the
colonies. In general terms the Accord (with 21 articles) and its 1941 complementary Missionary
Statutes (with 82 articles) ruled that missions in the colonies were “institutions of imperial
utility, with an utmost civilizing importance”.24 Thereafter the agreements defined that the state
would invest massively in missionary activities, paying for all health and education for
Africans, while the church would not just evangelize but also civilize and portugalize Africans,
i.e. turn them into Portuguese subjects. To make this happen, the state agreed to invest
massively in missionary activities and it did so through the payment of subsidies to dioceses,
salaries for missionary personnel, land hand-outs for mission stations, and tax exemptions.
Subsidies were paid both to religious congregations and to dioceses (see table 1.1 for the overall
figures between 1940 and 1960). Missionaries received not only salaries, but also travel
subsidies and a retirement plan. To tie the church into the state’s grand plan even further, the
state only allowed and paid religious orders in the colonies if they registered with the state in
Portugal and had an active presence there. Just like in the metropole, the Portuguese government
gained a say in the nomination of bishops as well as in the choice of mission teachers, and it
established a restriction in the use of non-Portuguese personnel. The Missionary Statutes
additionally obliged all missionaries to do secular teaching in the Portuguese language – they
could do religious teaching in local tongues.25
Another significant aspect of the Concordat and Missionary Agreement was its
redefinition of the organization of the Roman Catholic Church in the colonies. While the church
had been organized into missions, territorial prelatures, and a few dioceses until 1940, the
institution was now to be structured mostly in dioceses. There was much discussion during the
negotiations between Rome and Lisbon about other forms of organization, not least “vicariates”
which some Bishops preferred. It entailed the handing of territories not just to a Bishop, but to
a particular congregation which would run exclusively the territory they were attributed. After
much negotiation, however, Rome and Lisbon agreed bishoprics for the whole of the empire.26
Angola was given a second diocese, Mozambique was transformed from prelature into three
dioceses, São Tomé was excised from Cape Verde and made into a diocese just like Timor was
excised from Macao and transformed into a diocese. The exception was Guinea-Bissau which
was transformed into an Apostolic prefecture in view of the small size of its Christianity.
Adopting a diocesan structure for the church in the Portuguese empire was somewhat
surprising. Dioceses are structures meant to reflect the development of “mature Christianities”,

23
Missionary Accord in Bernhard Josef Wenzel, Portugal und der Heilige Stuhl, op.cit., pp.323-342
24
Paragraph 1 of the Missionary Status of April 5, 1941, in Wenzel, Portugal und der Heilige Stuhl, p.409
25
B.J. Wenzel, Portugal und der Heilige Stuhl. op.cit.
26
For a fuller discussion on this point, see Eric Morier-Genoud, Catholicism and the Making of Politics in
Central Mozambique, 1940-1986 (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2019), p.22.
something that was not the case for most Portuguese territories. Additionally the classic way
for the Vatican to undermine the Padroado was to bypass it with apostolic prefectures and
apostolic vicariates. The reason for this eventual choice had to do with the fact that Portugal
wanted to look like it had strong Christian churches in its empire, while the Vatican seems to
have been happy to conciliate all Catholic congregations already present as opposed to choosing
only one for each territory. Presumably, the Vatican also gave in on this point to gain more
advantage on another point.

The Concordat in practice

Both the Portuguese Church and the State were satisfied with the Concordat and Missionary
Accord in 1940, and in the years that followed. The accords closed a long period of
anticlericalism, as we saw, and they promised a great future for the Catholic Church and the
Estado Novo. Relations between church and state were thereafter calm in the following decade,
with no public complaints, all focused on putting into practice the accords and expanding their
respective area of interest – a win/win situation. The state focused on building its colonial
administration and economy, and in Mozambique in 1942 in retaking control of the mass
territory that has been allocated to the majestic company of Mozambique. On its side the Church
focused on building missions, churches, schools and hospitals and recruiting an ever increasing
number of missionaries to work in the colonies while training local teachers and seminarists.
These were times of great expansion and of the consolidation of Portuguese colonialism and of
the Catholic faith, to everyone apparent (public) satisfaction.
Below the surface, issues developed rapidly, causing some frictions between church and
state. The first issue related to Portuguese nationalism which occasionally clashed with the
Catholic hierarchy’s interest. Because the Portuguese Republic had closed seminaries in 1911,
and thus hindered the training of priests and missionaries, and because the colonial territories
were more than twenty times the size of Portugal, the Portuguese Church did not have enough
staff to work in the empire. It therefore had to recruit foreign missionaries, something which
became a problem after World War II. Article two of the Missionary Accord allowed foreign
religious personnel to work in the empire only if there were not enough national missionaries,
and provided they submitted to Portuguese laws. After 1944 however, the Portuguese
government became concerned with certain nationalities which it saw as dangerous. The state
reckoned that those who lost their empire after the war (Italy and the Netherland) and Germans
might try to undermine the Portuguese empire out of “national jealousy”. It therefore prohibited
in 1949 any German, Italian and Dutch missionaries from coming to work in the Portuguese
colonies – on the top of capping more stringently at 50% the number of foreign missionaries to
allowed in any one diocese.
Such prohibition was not a problem for many dioceses and Bishops, but in Mozambique
the Bishop of Beira, for one, saw this as a threat to the progress of his church and he became
restless. He contested the measure with the minister of colonies with whom he engaged in a
vivid correspondence. Among others, he wrote a letter in January 1950 in which he stated:
To say that Catholic missionaries create a patriotic risk is an offence to the history of
our mission, it is an offence to the Portuguese Bishops who lead the diocese and must
be on top of what goes on, and it is not even [.?.] that the Holy See takes advantage as
it has the most rigorous norms on this matter.27

27
Private Archives of the Bishops of Beira (PABB), University of Oporto, Portugal, Letter of the Bishop of
Beira to the Portuguese Minister of Colonies, 3 January 1950
The minister answered the Bishop, saying that he had shown the letter to Salazar who had
brought it for discussion to the Council of Ministers. The decision, the minister explained, to
cap missionaries and prohibit Dutch, German and Italians had been maintained because political
considerations came first. The Bishop was furious and wrote in his diary: “They do not allow
the coming of German and Italian missionaries. They allow the coming of foreign Protestants
and Muslims and they do not allow Catholics! Where is the logic of the government”.28 Less
emotional, he added a few days later:
“The letter of the Minister says that the Council of Ministers decided to have the
political aspect come first. This reminds me of Mauras ‘la politique d’abord’. I will
always answer this with the primacy of the spiritual”.29
The Bishop did not give up though, and a few months later, in Lisbon, he went to see the
minister of colonies to argue his case again. Pragmatically the minister agreed then to allow
some Italian, German and Dutch missionary to the diocese of Beira, but only in small
numbers.30 Thus the episode came to an end, but the tensions had been significant and the topic
had to be resolved at the level of the council of ministers.
A second issue that created frictions between church and state related to finance. The state
paid salaries and subsidies to the dioceses and congregations. Yet some bishop felt that the
Portuguese administration did not give as much support as had been agreed or promised, and/or
they felt the funds distributed were not distributed in an equal fashion between dioceses. The
value of the funds invested by the state was, as the table below shows, growing steadily between
1940 and 1962. In twenty years, the state more than doubled its investment in the Catholic
institution (in constant dollars; see Table 1.1. below). More funds were invested in Mozambique
than in Angola, but while the Angolan territory was bigger than Mozambique, the colony had
less population. Thereafter it is not wholly clear what kind of inequalities existed and whether
they were between colonies as well as between dioceses. Be this as it may, the fact is that some
Bishops complained and protested the allocation of funds. This was the case with the Bishop of
Beira for example. In 1949 he protested the absence of subsidy raise in his diocese and in protest
decided to not allow school inspection in the districts of Manica, Sofala, Tete and Zambezia. In
1954 he protested again what he perceived as the unfair distribution of the Church subsidies in
Mozambique (between dioceses). He was so upset that he declared that he wanted to go to the
colony’s capital and not visit the Governor-General to show his anger. While in the capital, the
Governor pre-empted his threat by paying him a visit first, but the Bishop broke the protocol
none the less by not returning the visit.31 The issue of subsidies continued in subsequent years.
In some occasion the Governor gave the Bishop extra funds for specific tasks (colleges, sisters,
etc.), to compensate, but overall the issue is one which frustrated the Bishop. As we will see
below, this would eventually lead to a serious clash in 1965.

TABLE 1.1. STATE SUBSIDIES TO THE CHURCH IN PORTUGUESE EMPIRE (U$D), 1940-62
1940-42 1943-45 1946-48 1949-51 1952-54 1955-57 1958-60 1961-62
Year
2 years only
$ Dollars 1.990.322 2.910.470 4.344.157 5.594.418 7.031.197 8.477.876 10.708.555 8.123.509

Constant 1.990.322 2.272.782 2.547.838 3.061.512 3.633.220 4.380.876 5.064.857 3.765.509

28
PABB, diary 6 de Fevereiro de 1950.
29
PABB, diary, entry 10 de Fevereiro de 1950.
30
PABB, diary 10 de Outubro de 1950.
31
PABB, diary 28 de Janeiro de 1954.
Source: E. dos Santos, L’État portugais et le problème missionnaire (Lisbon: JIU/CEHU, 1964),
pp.121-123. Constant dollars calculated by the author on the basis of CPI.

The most important issue emerging under the apparently quiet surface of good church-state
relations after 1940 related to the “social doctrine” of the Church. Indeed, the social realities on
the ground in the colonies, whether in Angola, Mozambique or elsewhere in the empire, were
harsh and the Bishops were at pain to square them with the Vatican’s social doctrine. It is true
that not all Bishop were concerned, but a significant number were. The Bishop of Beira started
complaining privately about forced labour and forced cultivation in 1944 already, that is: a year
after he arrived in Mozambique. In 1950 he created a public scandal when he denounced forced
plantations in a pastoral letter in the name of the social doctrine.32 The situation was not
different in many other dioceses. In Angola the Episcopal Conference raised the issue as soon
as it was established in 1957. The Bishop of Malange raised the issue in writing in 1959 when
he denounced forced labour, noting the convenient “forgetting of laws” by both state and private
companies.33 On his side, the Archbishop of Luanda claims that he denounced injustices since
no less than 1931!34 Clearly, the clash between the social doctrine of the Church and the harsh
realities of colonialism was a serious issue and it did not go away. In fact, over time, it would
provide a strong basis why alternative ideas and models of church-state relations developed.
While in the 1940s and early 1950s, minor discussions existed in relation to what constituted
the best imperial models (British, French or Portuguese), serious thinking about alternatives to
imperialism and colonialism only developed in the late 1950s and 1960s in the Portuguese
empire – for some missionaries the Afro-Asian Bandung conference of 1955 was a turning-
point.
Before we discuss African independence, it is worth noting that the Portuguese imperial
state also felt frustrated on occasions, or in some sectors, by the Concordat and Missionary
Accord. For one, some elements in the state administration were anticlerical, because they were
freemason and/or because they had been trained during the anticlerical 1910 Republic.35 The
Catholic Church complained regularly about free masonry, until quite late,36 and the Bishop of
Beira complained regularly in his private diary of masonic administrators and professionals in
the state administration.37 For another, there were individuals in the state administration who
were critical of the church, from early on, because they did not find it efficient enough to realise
the state’s ultimate “civilizing mission”. Among others the church did not manage to take over
all the state schools after 1940, as demanded in the Missionary Statute, and twenty years later
it had still not converted that many Africans, in the view of the church critics, in spite of massive
investment by the state.38 While these views were not dominant in the 1940s and 1950s, they
existed and they had an impact in the 1960s, within a new context. Facing the beginning of
liberations wars, the Portuguese state began to feel the Church could not deliver enough
colonisation of the mind and it decided to re-launch state-run schools as well as broadened its
32
Eric Morier-Genoud, Catholicism and the Making of Politics, op.cit. p.29
33
Emmanuelle Besson, ‘Autour du procès de Joaquim Pinto de Andrade. L'église catholique et l’Angola colonial
1960-1975’, Le Fait Missionnaire (Lausanne, Switzerland), 12 (2002), pp.58-59
34
Cited in ibid.
35
On free freemasonry, see A. H. de Oliveira Marques, A maçonaria portuguesa e o Estado Novo (Lisbon: Dom
Quixote, 1995) and Yves Léonard, ‘Salazarisme et Franc-Maçonnerie,’ unpublished paper, n.d. On elements in
the administration trained during the first republic, see Michel Cahen, ‘L’État Nouveau et la diversification
religieuse au Mozambique, 1930-1974. I. Le résistible essor’, op.cit., p.310.
36
See for example P. António Fernades, ‘A Maçonaria e o Comunismo contra as Missões em Moçambique’,
Missões Franciscanas, 196 (1960), p.1
37
See for example, entries for 11 July 1946, 26 September 1946; 5 November 1947; and 3 February 1948.
38
Michel Cahen, ‘L’État Nouveau et la diversification religieuse au Mozambique, 1930-1974. I. Le résistible
essor’, op.cit., pp.313-23
alliance to other churches – Anglicans, Jehovah Witnesses and even some sectors of Islam in
the case of Mozambique.39
While the colonial state engaged in schooling and allied with other churches, the
Catholic institution underwent internal changes, theological and social, which culminated in the
aggiornamento of Vatican II. This also increased the tensions which existed between church
and state. A first crisis came in 1958 with the case of the bishop of Oporto who, in a difficult
electoral year for Salazar, decided to criticise the regime for its incapacity to deal with the
“social question” in Portugal – the social doctrine of the church yet again. In a private letter,
the Bishop asked Salazar that allow Catholics to organise politically. The reaction was very
strong, Salazar taking a hard-line in relation to the case, and going as far as threatening the
Vatican to revoke the authorisation for the Catholic Action in Portugal. Salazar demanded
punishment for the irreverent Bishop (his letter was leaked, possibly by Salazar himself) and
Salazar stated that, if this did not happen, there would be “serious implications for the
Concordat and even for the relations between the State and the Church” in Portugal.40 The
Vatican was involved in the affair, alongside the Portuguese hierarchy, to resolve the crisis, and
the Church eventually caved to Salazar. The Bishop of Oporto was sent in exile (to Spain), with
the end result being a firm realignment of the Catholic hierarchy with the regime.41 Below the
surface, and lower down the hierarchy, the breach of trust did not disappear and it would not be
until the Carnation Revolution.
While Church official and public criticism was silenced in Portugal after 1958, protest
and opposition took off in the colonies soon after. The there was not just the Catholic Action or
the Concordat, but the Missionary Accord and Missionary Status which had led to a tighter
integration of church and state in the colonies (called “Overseas provinces” after 1951).
Tensions grew between first because of the beginning of liberation wars in 1961. Immediately
after the first attacks in Angola, several African priests were sent in exile to Portugal.42 Other
missionaries and African priests became involved all the same in supporting the African
nationalist cause in subsequent years.43 The Bishop of Beira, on his side, became secretly
favourable to independence after 1962 (if in favour of a multiracial independence) and he
therefore tried to keep a certain distance with the state. This led to a minor scandal in 1964
when his newspaper published a news item about Frelimo’s inaugural military attack in Chai.
The newspaper’s publication was immediately suspended as punishment. In 1965 the same
newspaper was suspended for ten days after the Bishop refused to submit his own writing (an
homily) to the censorship commission – the Concordat exempted his religious writing from
censorship, but not other writings.44 The newspaper was suspended for ten days. The Bishop
went to Lisbon and had an audience with Salazar who showed sympathy. But a few weeks later,
the Vatican’s Secretary of State had a meeting with the head of the Portuguese government with
whom he discussed Dom Sebastião’s case. Salazar defended his extensive reading of the state’s
rights and he warned the Vatican not to think about revising the Concordat. He threatened that,
39
Michel Cahen, ‘Le colonialisme tardif et la diversification religieuse au Mozambique (1959-1974)’, Lusotopie
1998, pp.377-95 and ‘L'État Nouveau et la diversification religieuse au Mozambique, 1930-1974
II. La portugalisation désespérée (1959-1974)’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines, no.159, 2000.
40
Duncan Simpson, A igreja católica e o Estado Novo Salazarista (Lisbon: Edições 70, 2014), p.174 and João
Miguel Almeida, A Oposição Católica ao Estado Novo, 1958–1974 (Lisbon: Nelson de Matos, 2008), pp.59-82.
41
João Miguel Almeida, A Oposição Católica ao Estado Novo, 1958–1974, op.cit. Citation from Salazar from
Duncan Simpson, Duncan Simpson, A igreja católica e o Estado Novo Salazarista, p.174
42
Carlo Alberto Alves (ed), Esperar pela hora de Deus. O exílio forçado de sacerdotes angolanos em Portugal -
1960-1974 (Luanda: Mayamba, 2015); José Manuel da Silveira Lopes, O Cónego Manuel das Neves. Um
Nacionalista Angolano. Ensaio de Biografia Política (Lisbon: Vega, 2017); and Diana Andringa e Victória de
Almeida e Sousa (eds), Joaquim Pinto de Andrade, Uma Quase Autobiografia (Oporto: Afrontamento, 2017).
43
For the case of Mozambique, see Catholicism and the Making of Politics in Central Mozambique, op.cit, ch.4.
44
A. Carlos Lima, Aspectos da liberdade religiosa: Caso do bispo da Beira (Lisbon: Diário do Minho, 1970)
and Caso do Bispo da Beira: Documentos (Oporto: Civilização, 1990).
if it did, the Vatican would come to regret it.45 Said differently, the Concordat and the
Missionary Accord began to be questioned by 1965, with references made to (the risk of) its
revision.
The situation aggravated further in the 1970s, particularly in Mozambique. To start with
the White Fathers decided in 1971 to leave the territory as a congregation – a world première.
They aimed thereby at denouncing, and extricating themselves from, what they saw as
unsustainable church and state relations, i.e. the Concordat and Missionary Accord as practiced
at the time.46 While a few other congregations considered doing the same, most chose to stay,
some because they supported the Portuguese regime, but others because they did not want to
engage in politics while one, the Spanish Burgos fathers, said it wanted to stay to better support
the liberation struggle on the ground.47 Then, in February 1974, a group of Comboni
missionaries published a letter with their Bishop of Nampula entitled “A Call of Conscience”.
The letter called for an end to the Concordat and Missionary accord and the independence of
Mozambique. Additionally the missionaries stated that they were renouncing state subsidies
and would hand all schools to the state at the end of the school year. Before this could happen,
they were deported from Mozambique, just like the White Fathers three years earlier.48 Two
months later, just before the coup d’état in Lisbon, the congregation of the Dutch Picpus fathers
decided to follow on the White Fathers’ steps and declared they would also leave Mozambique
in protest against the religious regime which did not allow, they argued, the church to do its
work properly anymore.49
In short, tensions between church and state emerged in the public sphere in the late
1950s and transformed into an increasing number of clashes in the 1960s and 1970s which put
a strain on the Concordat and Missionary Accord. While Salazar threatened the Vatican against
thinking of a revision to these international agreements, he applied an ever more restrictive
reading and practice of the texts as seen in the case of the censorship of the religious writing of
the Bishop of Beira. On their side, more and more religious congregations began to contest
openly and forcefully the Concordat and Missionary Accord. In 1971 the White Fathers left
Mozambique in protest of the situation and in 1974 another congregation publically renounced
the privileges which flowed from these agreements while another decided to abandon
Mozambique for the same reasons as the White Fathers. From this we can say that by the early
1970s the religious regime established by the Concordat and Missionary Accord were in open
crisis. The last question we need to address, accordingly, is whether there was, behind the scene,
any movement to revise these publically challenged agreements.

Re-negotiating and Ending the Concordat

No analysis exists of any negotiation in relation of the Concordat or Missionary Accord after
1940. Most studies focus on the negotiations up to the signing of the Concordat and Missionary
Accord and the application or contestation of these agreements after 1940. Similarly, most
authors do not analyse, or even refer, to the end of these international agreements in 1974-75,
as if they had just disappeared, extinguished “naturally” with independence. Yet, in view of

45
Carlos A. Moreira Azevedo, ‘Perfil biográfico de D. Sebastião Soares de Resende’ in Sebastião Soares de
Resende, Profeta em Moçambique (Lisbon: Difel, 1994), p.1308.
46
Eric Morier-Genoud, Catholicism and the Making of Politics op.cit, pp.132-3.
47
Ibid, pp.132-3 and pp.143-4
48
Arnaldo Baritussio, Mozambico: 50 anni di presenza dei missionari comboniani (Bologna: Editrice
Missionaria Italiana, 1997), pp. 237-274 and José Luiza, Manuel Vieira Pinto: O Visionário de Nampula (Prior
Velho: Paulinas, 2016), pp.72-4.
49
Eric Morier-Genoud, Catholicism and the Making of Politics, op.cit., pp.146-7
what we saw earlier, one can expect that things were not that straightforward and simple. Some
individuals on the church side, and possibly on the state side, were keen to renegotiate and
revise these international agreements. Similarly one should not assume, a priori, that the
Concordat and Missionary Accord just lapsed with the end of the Portuguese empire in 1975
without any discussion about whether some elements could be retained or some substitute
accords could replace it. From this standpoint, the present section explores moments and
initiatives to edit or abolish the Concordat and Missionary Accord as well as attempts to
negotiate an alternative in 1974-75, with an intention to restore some complexity and nuance to
the existing historical narrative.

Before anything else, we need to remember that there was a hierarchy between the Concordat,
the Missionary Accord, and the Missionary Statute. The first established the general principles
of the relation between Portugal and the Vatican; the second established the rules for church-
state relations in the empire; while the third offered details on how the alliance in the colonies
would work in practice. While the first two agreements were 31 and 21 articles long,
respectively, the third was a decree-law with 82 articles. Since the latter was more detailed and
practical, most problems emerged in the first instance in relation to the Missionary Status. Some
of its articles were not practical and could, in fact, not be applied in full or in part, as in the case
of article 15, 66 and 70. Article 15 referred to nationality, saying that all missionaries should
be Portuguese. Exception could be granted by the state, the article said, but the Church had to
make a request. We saw earlier how this article caused problems and tensions early on, because
there never was enough Portuguese missionaries to work in the whole empire. On its side,
article 66 stated that Catholic missionaries and auxiliaries should run all schools for Africans
across the empire. This referred not only to Protestant or Islamic schools, but also to state
education. Yet, as shown by Michel Cahen, the Catholic Church did not have the capacity to
run enough education facilities for all Africans, let alone take over state schools after 1940 as
required by the decree. Consequently, the decree was not applied in full.50 Article 70, for its
part, stated that all training colleges and seminaries in the empire had to be run by Portuguese
staff. Yet, as with the two precedent articles, and for the same reasons, this was not feasible. As
a result, the Portuguese state accepted to ignore the article in practice and most seminaries ended
up being run by foreign missionary staff.

Another way revisions were seen in practice happened when a new law was created which
undermined, intentionally or not, an article or area of these international agreements. The best
example of this relates to the abolition of the indigenato in 1961. This policy choice was a
significant move to reform colonialism and attempt to align with international practice. But,
collaterally, it also undermined aspects of the Missionary Statute. Indeed, the latter gave
exclusive responsibility for health and education for Africans to the Roman Catholic. Yet the
legal category of “indigenous” did not exist anymore, so the monopoly had not base anymore.
Interestingly, the colonial state rapidly took advantage of this new reality to develop, first, more
state schools and, second, to allow more involvement from other religious organisations, not
least Protestants and Muslims. As shown by Michel Cahen, this had to do with the concern the
colonial state had that the Catholic Church could not actually serve as many Africans as it
wished and the consequent (perceived) risk this could have for the development of African
nationalism – liberation struggle began in Angola in 1961. In short, not only were some laws
not practical hence not put in practice in the colonies, but the state also created new laws which
undermined the Concordat, Missionary Accord or Missionary Statute and which allowed it to
act in contradiction to these accord, hence in effect revise them.
50
Michel Cahen, ‘L’État Nouveau et la diversification religieuse au Mozambique, 1930-1974. I. Le résistible
essor’, op.cit., p.12-13.
While practice and other legal changes allowed some revision in practice of the Concordat and
its associate agreements from the start, we saw earlier that various calls were also made in the
1960s to alter, if not end, all these agreements between the Vatican and Lisbon. The main
attempt that we know of took place in 1971 when the White Fathers prepared to leave
Mozambique in protest of the religious regime that, they claimed, did not allow the Church to
do its work normally anymore. While Father held meetings with other congregations in
Mozambique as well as in Rome to discuss the choice of the White Fathers to leave
Mozambique and talk over what should be done about it. While meeting in Mozambique were
quite practical, those in Rome aimed at revising the Concordat and Missionary Accord. The
superiors of several congregations who had a presence in Mozambique met in 1971 and agreed,
first, to draft a letter addressed to the Mozambican bishops setting the conditions under which
their congregations would accept to continue working in the territory. Before sending it to
Mozambique, the superiors sent the document to the Vatican’s Secretariat of State in August
1971. While the secretary seemed positive in relation to the initiative, the letter was eventually
blocked and archived at that level. In July 1973, after the crisis in the church and national
politics had deepened with the imprisonment and trial of the Macuti fathers (the first trial of
Portuguese priests) and the massacres of Mukumbura and Wiriyamu (denounced internationally
by missionaries), the superiors of 14 congregations met again in Rome, this time with the
Vatican Secretary of State. They asked the Vatican for a public position denouncing the
situation in Mozambique and, more specifically: (1) for pressure to be placed on the episcopate
in Mozambique, (2) for the Vatican to nominate better Bishops in Mozambique, and (3) for the
freeing of the church from its economic ties with the Portuguese state. In not-very-coded words,
the last point meant they requested a revision of the Concordat and associate accords, or their
termination.
The Secretary of State seemed to agree with the head of these congregations and he sent
a report with these three requests to the Pope. In November 1973, he met the head of
congregations again and reported on the Holy See’s views in relation to these requests. The
secretary of state declared about point 3 relating to the Concordat and Missionary accord:
The church will not initiate breaking up a convention that it has signed with a state. It
can revise certain clauses, for example, if subsidies that the church receives from the
government hamper its liberty. But it is not enough for the religious to be prepared to
renounce these subsidies. The prelates and the secular clergy also need to be prepared
to do the same.51
In other words, the secretary of state argued, first, that the church never broke international
agreements though it could revise them. Second, he explained that the Vatican could not, and
would not revise the Concordat and Missionary Accord unless all clergy and all bishops in
Mozambique agreed. It is not clear if he meant all bishops and clergy, or a majority, and it is
not clear if he would need Bishops and clergy from all the empire or just from Mozambique.
Be this as it may, the point is that the Vatican and the Pope considered the request from these
Superiors, and that they were not willing at that point to revise its agreements with the
Portuguese state. While this is a fact, it remains that a very large number of religious
congregations (no less than fourteen) wanted to revise the Concordat and Missionary Accord
and tried to convince the Vatican to do so.
To conclude, how did the Concordat and the Missionary Accord come to an end in
Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and other Portuguese territories? There has been no

51
Document 18, Unione Superiori Generali, ‘Seconda riunione dei superiorir generali e (o) loro assistente che
hanno missionari nel Mozambico, con. S.E.R. Mons. Agostino Casaroli,’ confidenziale, November 22, 1973, p.
1, Box 6.25 ‘Reakties van missionaissen of religieuzen na de publikatie over Inhaminha von 10 mai 1974,’ p. 2,
Archives of the Picpus Congregation, Breda, The Netherlands.
research into the subject, as mentioned before, with most authors assuming these accords lapsed
at the end of the Portuguese empire in 1975. In reality, things are much more complex. For one,
the Concordat ended in the colonies in 1975, but it continued in Portugal, unchanged, until the
year… 2004. Only the Missionary Accord elapsed in Portugal as it had not more relevance. In
the colonies, the Concordat, the Missionary Accord and Missionary Statute did not “elapse”
before discussion for an alternative were looked into – at least in Mozambique. Indeed, during
the transition period, the Vatican began to reorganise the church in Mozambique in preparation
for independence. A first step was the retirement of many Portuguese Bishops and the
concomitant nomination of Mozambican bishops in their stead. In December 1974 the Holy See
also nominated an Apostolic Delegate, choosing for the task Francesco Colasuonno who had
been until then the apostolic delegate to China. Based in Taiwan, Colasuonno had gained
experience in “communist regimes”, something that was clearly a reason why he was
nominated. Yet, according to the late Bishop of Inhambane, one of the things the Apostolic
delegate did during his time in Mozambique was to try, precisely, to negotiate an agreement
with Frelimo for future relations with the Vatican.52 According to the same source, Frelimo
would not have been interested and the Concordat and Missionary Accord would have
thereafter elapsed without any substitute agreement. Sources close to Frelimo contest that any
negotiation ever took place.53 Be this as it may, the fact is that at the very least the Vatican (or
some Bishops) considered either revising the existing Concordat for Mozambique or
negotiating a new agreement.

Conclusion
Exploring anew the agreements signed between the Vatican and the Portuguese government in
1940 has led us to investigate its design, signature, application, transformation, and eventual
termination. What the investigation has revealed is, first, that we need to look at the agreements
as much as a tool to close a long problematic historical period of church-state conflict as a tool
to open a new historical period which both sides hoped they could benefit from. Secondly, the
investigation has revealed that, as a legal text, the set of agreements did not deliver all that was
hoped for by either side, leading to some frustrations on both sides. Thirdly, we saw that the
agreements were not always fully applied, and that they began to be undone in the 1960s and
in the 1970s even more. While Salazar threatened to sink the Concordat should the Church wish
to revise it, some sections of the Church, including not less than fourteen religious
congregations in the 1970s, wished to reform, if not abandon the Concordat, Missionary Accord
and Missionary Statute – some withdrew from these agreements before independence. Finally,
we uncovered that the end of the Concordat and Missionary Accord was not just one where the
agreements simply elapsed. There was an attempt, in Mozambique at the very least, to find
some substitute arrangement, if not a full new agreement for the relation between church and
state in the post-colonial period. It is a case to say that the history of the Concordat and its
adjoined agreements is far more complex and rich than most studies had revealed so far.

What does this all means? The first obvious point is that reality is always more complex than
any legal text. Hence, while using the Concordat to describe church state relations in the Third
Portuguese empire may be a handy raccourci, it is also reductive and not helpful to understand
what happened in reality and in practice, in all its complexity and subtlety. A second point

52
Dom Alberto Setele, interview, Inhambane 26 February 1996.
53
Marcelino dos Santos, interview, Maputo, 24 April 1997; and Father Filipe Couto, interview, 14 August 2017.
relates to periodization. The Concordat and Missionary Accord only covered part of the colonial
period of the Portuguese territories (the years 1940-1975), hence scholars should not use these
international agreements to qualify the religious regime of the whole Third empire. And, even
within the 1940-1975 period, these agreements were only fully operational up to the 1960s since
they entered in open crisis thereafter. Finally, if the Concordat and Missionary Accord are not
adequate to characterise church-state relations in the Portuguese empire, what is the alternative?
Looking at church state models worldwide, we can say that the situation in Portugal and its
colonies in the 20th Century was obviously not a theocracy nor a secular separationist regime.
There was much integration between the Catholic Church and the state, though formally still
separation. Thereafter, it may be adequate to qualify the religious regime in Portugal and its
colonies as one of religious establishment whereby the state all but recognised the Catholic
Church as the official church. We could say that a strong religious establishment existed in
Portugal where society was mostly Catholic; and an even stronger and more problematic strong
establishment existed in the colonies where the population was religiously diverse (as opposed
to Portugal). Between 1940 and 1975, this “strong establishment” religious regime altered,
starting from being very strong in the 1940s and 1950s, weakening in the 1960s, and entering
a crisis period in the 1970s. In 1975, this regime bifurcated, continuing in Portugal while in the
colonies the model came to an end, to be substituted by a strong secular separatist model in
Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau after independence.