Monsignor Pablo Cabrera: The "national's must be" and the "citizen's must be" in his sermons

Abstract

Monsignor Pablo Cabrera was a priest-historian who had relevance in the history of Cordoba in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His various facets granted him recognition in different areas of the culture of Cordoba, such as his role as a historian, ethnographer, ethnologist, collector of documents, and sacred speaker among others.
In this paper, I will focus on his role as a sacred orator. The function of the sacred oratory was to disseminate the message that the Church needed to reach society through recognized leaders, from an oral culture. The messages of Cabrera tried to generate awareness on various issues of general concern. These messages shaped the path to the correct action within a body of moral values. In this regard, I will also analyze the civic sermons of Cabrera and the messages he tried to convey to the society of Cordoba and Argentina. In addition, I will characterize the ways of preparing his oratorical pieces, focusing on the analysis of two civic sermons of 1902: a Te Deum for the Pacts of May, and a sermon for the celebration of May 25.