Church-state tensions in Bolivia cloud Pope's visit as Morales seeks to limit church influence

By CARLOS VALDEZ, Associated Press

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — President Evo Morales is a huge fan of Pope Francis, and says he couldn't be happier they are of the same mind that capitalism promotes social inequalities that leave the poor by the wayside.

But until Francis' election to the papacy in 2013 — and even today to a lesser degree — Morales' government has had rocky relations with the Catholic Church.

No sooner had Morales taken office in 2006 than the Bible and cross were removed from the presidential palace. A new constitution in 2009 made this overwhelmingly Catholic nation a secular state and Andean religious rituals replaced Catholic rites at official state ceremonies.

All of which sets the stage for an interesting diplomatic dance Wednesday when Francis arrives in Bolivia's capital for an official visit, welcomed by Morales at the airport and then accompanied by him to a meeting with local officials and diplomats...

The president's tensions with the church have been manifold.

Morales considers the Catholic Church a powerful vestige of the colonial-era servitude from which the indigenous — more than 60 percent of Bolivia's population — are still trying to recover.

The government made it obligatory to teach other religions in schools alongside Catholicism, the faith of nearly four in five Bolivians. But it lost a major skirmish when it tried to prohibit obligatory Catholic religious education in the 15 percent of schools run by the church.

In the heat of the dispute, Morales accused Cardinal Julio Terrazas, then head of the Bolivian bishop's conference, of being aligned with the opposition and stripped him of his diplomatic passport.

All official ceremonies in Bolivia are now preceded by rituals venerating the Andean earth goddess Pachamana.

That doesn't square with the Bolivian church hierarchy, which in a 2012 pastoral letter called school texts that refer to Pachamana as a divinity "erroneous and a deviation."