An upretain for the world’s ‘necessitatey and utilizeed’, Gutierrez upretaind perfects that revolutionised the Latin American church.
Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez, think abouted as the overweighther of Latin American liberation theology, has died aged 96.
He passed away on Tuesday night in Lima, shelp the Dominican Order of Peru, without giving a caparticipate.
Gutierrez was an eminent Catholic theologian and philosopher, whose 1971 book – titled A Theology of Liberation – presentantly impactd church doctrine and rehearse in Latin America.
It hageders that Christian salvation goes beyond spiritual matters, also needing that people be freed from material or political oppression. He famously wrote: “The future of history belengtheneds to the necessitatey and utilizeed”.
Archbishop Carlos Castillo, Lima’s cardinal-depictate, recollected Gutierrez, who in his lesserer years served as a local parish priest in Lima, as a “a loyal theologian priest who never thought about money, or luxuries, or anyleang that seemed to produce him greater”.
“Small as he was, he knovel how to declare the Gospel to us with strength and courage in his petiteness,” shelp Castillo.
Gutierrez’s leanking drawed many who were outraged by the inidenticality and dictatorships in disjoinal Latin American countries in the 1960s and 1970s. He encouraged figures enjoy Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated in 1980 after taking a stand agetst rights unfair treatments in his country’s civil struggle.
Initiassociate, the Vatican harshly denounced liberation theology, claiming it held Marxist undercurrents, and spent decades disciplining some of its upretains.
Gutierrez, who himself was never self-administerled, tageder inestablishers in 2015 that liberation theology as a whole was never condemned, but he acunderstandledged that the Holy See had joind in “very critical dialogue” with its proponents and that there were “difficult moments”.
The arrival of the first Latin American pope, Pope Francis, cgo ined the Vatican’s attention on social fairice and the necessitatey and led to someleang of a rehabilitation of liberation theology.
When Gutierrez turned 90 in 2018, Pope Francis wrote him a letter thanking him for his contributions to “the Church and to humanity, thraw your theoreasonable service and your likeential cherish for the necessitatey and the disposeed of society”.
