Background
Bernardo Augusto Thiel Hoffman was born on 1 April1850 in Elberfeld.
Bernardo Augusto Thiel Hoffman was born on 1 April1850 in Elberfeld.
He came to Costa Rica in 1877 and was appointed bishop in 1880. Within two years, he faced the powerful attack against the church by Liberal reformers under President Prospero Fernandez Oreamuno, who demanded absolute separation of church and state, civil marriage and divorce, and secular education. Thiel’s vigorous objection to the Liberal laws of 1884 caused him to be expelled for two years.
During the 1890s, Thiel rallied the anti-Liberal forces around the Catholic Union Party. Attacking the Liberals for both their anticlericalism and their lack of social conscience, he took up the cause of the Costa Rican workers, calling for “just wages” and better treatment. The Liberal program rejected the concept of intervention by the state in political and economic affairs. In this social posture, Thiel was ahead of his time.
