An advocate for the world’s ‘poor and exploited’, Gutierrez promoted beliefs that revolutionised the Latin American church.
Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez, thought to be the daddy of Latin American liberation theology, has died aged 96.
He handed away on Tuesday night time in Lima, mentioned the Dominican Order of Peru, with out giving a trigger.
Gutierrez was an eminent Catholic theologian and thinker, whose 1971 e-book – titled A Theology of Liberation – deeply influenced church doctrine and apply in Latin America.
It holds that Christian salvation goes past non secular issues, additionally demanding that individuals be free of materials or political oppression. He famously wrote: “The way forward for historical past belongs to the poor and exploited”.
Archbishop Carlos Castillo, Lima’s cardinal-designate, remembered Gutierrez, who in his youthful years served as an area parish priest in Lima, as a “a devoted theologian priest who by no means considered cash, or luxuries, or something that appeared to make him superior”.
“Small as he was, he knew learn how to announce the Gospel to us with energy and braveness in his smallness,” mentioned Castillo.
Gutierrez’s pondering attracted many who have been outraged by the inequality and dictatorships in a number of Latin American nations within the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies. He impressed figures like Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated in 1980 after taking a stand in opposition to rights abuses in his nation’s civil battle.
Initially, the Vatican harshly denounced liberation theology, claiming it held Marxist undercurrents, and spent a long time disciplining a few of its advocates.
Gutierrez, who himself was by no means disciplined, informed reporters in 2015 that liberation theology as an entire was by no means condemned, however he acknowledged that the Holy See had engaged in “very vital dialogue” with its proponents and that there have been “troublesome moments”.
The arrival of the primary Latin American pope, Pope Francis, centered the Vatican’s consideration on social justice and the poor and led to one thing 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, by your theological service and your preferential love for the poor and the discarded of society”.
