Portugal’s durable leader, António Salazar, died 50 years ago this month on 27 July 1970. Although he was a former seminarian and one of the mottos of his regime was ‘God, Fatherland and Family’, the dictator’s relationship with the Catholic Church was complex and increasingly turbulent

The only serious attempt on the life of António de Oliveira Salazar occurred on 4 July 1937. As he was emerging from his car to go to Sunday Mass, a large bomb exploded. The damage was substantial but he was unscathed due to the direction of the force of the blast. Many of his supporters put this down to divine intervention.

After a long period of persecution under an anti-clerical regime, once the military took over in 1926, the Catholic Church enjoyed official toleration. Within six years the soldiers gave way to Salazar. The quietly spoken but iron-willed economics professor from the University of Coimbra proved to have the political skills and some of the economic answers to enable him to civilianise the regime. As prime minister for the next 36 years, he presided over a ruling alliance of conservatives, ex-liberals and some nationalist ideologues. Only a major stroke, caused by a domestic accident, led to his retirement in 1968. He was 79, and was to live for a further two years. His authoritarian regime was swept away and democracy was restored following the convulsive Carnation revolution of 1974.