This article aims to study the religious and political role played by the press to Colombian Catholicism in the nineteenth century. It exposes several hypotheses. The first: in the nineteenth century, the press went from being a marginal instrument for Colombian Catholicism, to become, at the end of the century, a bastion for the Church Romanization, political and religious struggle, catechetical activity and still, social control. Derived from the first hypothesis, it suggests that, despite being permeated by currents mostly traditionalists, the Catholic Church, to decide to use the press for public debate, adopted modern positions, joining a fundamental aspect of modernity: public discussion between proposed different world, society and politics, discussion involving external and internal debate on the definition of “identity” Catholic, which involved several positions and currents. Methodologically was used a hermeneutic - historical analysis of Colombian religious press, the statistical interpretation of the religious press in the archives and libraries of the country and the corresponding application of the critic of sources.