
Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino (1928–2024), a Dominican, is an icon of the post-conciliar Latin American Church. No one would be mistaken in calling him the “Father” of Liberation Theology.
Gutiérrez’s contribution to the Church on the continent is framed within the challenging reception of Vatican II, undoubtedly one of the most important councils in the history of the Catholic Church. The Peruvian theologian played a remarkable role in the Second Conference of Latin American Bishops, held in Medellín (1968), whose mission was to implement the Council in our continent. On that occasion, the Conference, much like Vatican II, raised its gaze and asked about the “signs of the times.” What did it see? Enormous cultural transformations and, particularly, grave social injustices whose consequences were violence and misery.
In those years, Gutiérrez, who would later join the Dominican Order, made his first attempts at drafting his renowned work A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation (1971). This work, in his own words, was intended to be: “A theology that does not limit itself to thinking about the world but seeks to position itself as a moment in the process through which the world is transformed: opening itself—in protest against the trampling of human dignity, in the struggle against the dispossession of the vast majority of humanity, in liberating love, in the construction of a new, just, and fraternal society—to the gift of the Kingdom of God.”
He was not alone. A host of theologians walked alongside him: Juan Luis Segundo, Leonardo Boff, Hugo Assmann, Jon Sobrino, Joseph Comblin, Pedro Trigo, Ronaldo Muñoz, Pablo Richard, Juan Carlos Scannone, Diego Irarrázaval, and Sergio Torres. In later years, a feminist theology of extraordinary quality emerged in Latin America. While nuanced, many of these theologians have shared a similar methodological approach in subsequent years: Elsa Támez, Ivone Gebara, Maria Clara Bingemer, Virginia Azcuy, Ana María Isasi-Díaz, María Pilar Aquino, and Nancy Bedford, among others. They are many.
Although this theology has developed in tension with the ecclesiastical hierarchy, particularly with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and has been censured in some theological faculties, it is also true that bishops and theologians alike have agreed on a fundamental point: the conviction that God opts for the poor, and that Christians, to be authentically so, must also opt for them.
From the Church’s millennial perspective, it is even more significant to note that beyond being a liberative theology, this movement has helped the Church in Latin America emerge as a mature institution. For centuries, our continent has been intellectually dependent. Here, particularly, Catholics have been regarded as minus habens. Today, however, there is greater awareness of having been victims of an exported Roman Western Catholicism. Latin American bishops and liberation theologians represent a Church reaching maturity. In the post-conciliar context, a Church of age has appeared in society.
Gutiérrez expresses it in these terms: “Liberation theology is one of the expressions of the adulthood that Latin American society and the Church present within it have begun to achieve in recent decades. Medellín took note of this adulthood, which significantly contributed to its historical significance and scope.”
What lies ahead? Today, the Catholic Church experiences greater tension. Across different regions of the world, in the various continents where it is present, there are calls for respect for a cultural synthesis that is locally determined. Rome has the responsibility to safeguard the unity of the Church, but the Pope cannot turn a two-thousand-year-old Tradition into a multiplicity of infantilizing traditionalisms.
The Church on this continent owes its future to those who, like Gutiérrez, have had the courage to think for themselves and the bravery to risk answering a crucial question: “How can we tell the poor that God loves them?”