Gustavo Gutiérrez, the influential Peruvian priest known as “the father of liberation theology” and hailed as a “prophet of the poor,” has died in Lima at the age of 96.
Gutiérrez, a theologian and Dominican friar, was a famous – and sometimes controversial – defender of the idea that the church needed to stand on the side of the poor and fight to improve their lot.
Liberation theology, which emerged in the turbulent Latin America of the 1960s and 1970s, argued that the Church had a duty to promote fundamental political and structural changes that would end poverty.
“Only authentic solidarity with the poor and a current protest against the poverty of our time can provide the concrete and very important context necessary for a theological discussion about poverty,” Gutiérrez wrote in his landmark 1971 book A Theology of Liberation. But the movement also led some in the church to go far beyond their traditional pastoral roles.
Priests inspired by liberation theology actively participated in the 1979 Sandinista revolution against the right-wing dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua. The philosophy also influenced leftist rebels in Mexico and Colombia, where one of the main guerrilla factions was led for almost 30 years by a defrocked Spanish priest, Manuel Pérez.
Gutiérrez's death was announced by the Dominican Province of San Juan Bautista of Peru, which reported in a statement that “our beloved brother went to Our Father's house” on Tuesday, adding that the priest's body would be deposited in the convent of Santo Domingo in Lima.
The Bartolomé de las Casas Institute, founded by Gutiérrez in 1974, paid tribute to its founder saying: “His writings and his work on behalf of the poor and the most forgotten in society will continue to illuminate the path of the church in its search for a fairer world. and a more fraternal world.”
In a post on contemporary theology.
Although Gutiérrez's work has been described as “a pioneering and prophetic approach that… [placed] “The exploited and economically oppressed at the center of a program to redeem God's people from slavery,” was not universally admired by his fellow priests.
His conclusions – among them his assertion that the theology of the time could learn from a “direct and fruitful confrontation with Marxism” – did not endear their author to some in Rome.
While the Vatican never condemned Gutiérrez or his works, there were rumors that he was being investigated by Pope John Paul II's chief of doctrine and discipline, a German cardinal named Joseph Ratzinger who would be elected Pope Benedict in 2005.
However, these differences were forgotten by Benedict's successor, Francis. Although Francis – then known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio – had opposed liberation theology while head of the Jesuits in Argentina in the 1970s, Gutiérrez was welcomed as a key speaker at a Vatican event in 2015.
And, in a birthday greeting to Gutiérrez in 2018, Francis said he thanked God for the Peruvian priest's “theological service and… preferential love for the poor and discarded of society.” The Pope added: “Thank you for your efforts and for your way of challenging the conscience of each person, so that no one remains indifferent to the drama of poverty and exclusion.”
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