Catholic Electoral League

The Catholic Electoral League (LEC - Liga Eleitoral Catolica) was a Brazilian political pressure group functioning from 1932–1937 under the direct auspices of the Catholic Church. It was formed as part of a larger Church effort to "re-Catholicize" Brazil after a period of increased secularism and liberalism in Brazilian society in the aftermath of World War I.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s Brazil was beset by several crises. The Great Depression led to the crash of the coffee market in 1929, leading to a financial collapse in which much of the rural lost most of their wealth. Society was becoming more urbanized, with large cities overtaking the more traditional rural regions in political influence. In 1930 a liberal, communist-backed revolution overthrew conservative president Washington Luis Pereira de Sousa. The early populist policies of the new government under Getúlio Vargas (1930–1945) accelerated the decline of the traditional authority of the landed aristocracy and the Church.

In 1932, the upper classes from the state of São Paulo rebelled in an attempt to stop this political slide. Their Constitutionalist Revolution failed, but in response, Getúlio Vargas convoked a constitutional assembly to revamp the country's political organization.

Realizing the importance of the upcoming constitutional assembly, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, with his friends Alceu de Amoroso Lima (a writer and recent convert to Catholicism) and Heitor da Silva Costa (architect of the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro), conceived the idea of the Catholic Electoral League. Its purposes would include providing voter guides so Catholics would know which candidates were more favorable to the Catholic cause. Cardinal Sebastião Leme, Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro and leader of the Brazilian bishops, sanctioned the plan, and soon the League was active all over Brazil.

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