The Pope and Liberation Theology

Wen Stephenson, Nation - While it’s true that Pope Francis is no Marxist- Leninist guerrilla leader seeking violent revolution, it is also the case that he has embraced liberation theology, and its deep critique of structural economic injustice and oppression, with open arms. This is the same pope who wrote, in his first apostolic exhortation, Evangelii gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel): “Today we also have to say ‘Thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills.” Yes, this summer’s encyclical is first a theological and moral document—but it is also, inescapably, a deeply political one.

Among the first things that Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio did upon becoming Pope Francis in March 2013, as Harvey Cox noted in these pages [“Is Pope Francis the New Champion of Liberation Theology?,” January 6/13, 2014], was to invite the Peruvian priest and theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, considered the father of liberation theology, to Rome. Then, in another much-discussed gesture last spring, Francis cleared the way for the beatification of Oscar Romero, the martyred Salvadoran archbishop who was gunned down at the altar by a right-wing death-squad sharpshooter in 1980. Such moves are taken as a clear sign that Francis wants to complete a reconciliation between the Vatican and the theological and social movement that emboldened resistance to right-wing Latin American regimes in the 1970s and ’80s and became a target of Cold War anticommunism under John Paul II and then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI). That reconciliation has been under way for several years. Ratzinger’s successor as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, worked in Peru and cowrote a book with Gutiérrez, On the Side of the Poor: The Theology of Liberation, in which he calls liberation theology “one of the most significant currents of Catholic theology in the twentieth century.”

Intriguingly, in an act much less publicized than the invitation to Gutiérrez, Francis also reached out early on in his papacy (as reported by his biographer, Paul Vallely) to a far more controversial figure: the Brazilian theologian and former Franciscan friar Leonardo Boff, another of the founders of liberation theology, who in 1985 was silenced by Ratzinger for his criticism of the church and subsequently left the priesthood. Boff is also known for his work on ecotheology; according to Vallely, this was among the reasons that Francis reached out to him privately and asked Boff to send his writings, saying he wanted to publish an encyclical on environmental issues. Boff’s best-known work in this vein, an effort to unite ecology and liberation theology, is his 1995 volume Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor. 

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