The South American country of Uruguay has a long tradition of secularism, to the point that a popular president in the early 1900s insisted on writing the word "God" with a lowercase "g'' whenever he wrote about his policies in local newspapers.
So when the Catholic Church recently proposed erecting a statue of the Virgin Mary in a park next to a popular promenade, a debate erupted over whether religious symbols in public places violate the separation between church and state.
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