The Pope launched a new liberation theology, in the form of globalised solidarity. In the 130 page long Apostolic Exhortation, entitled “Commitment of Africa for Christ”, Benedict XVI stressed the crucial importance of paying attention to the poor.
He defined illiteracy as a “blight” equal to AIDS, TB and malaria, and mobilised the Church, to save young people from a “lack of education, unemployment and political exploitation,” to prevent them from becoming “frustrated” and allowing them “to take their future into their own hands.”
The topics dealt with in the Exhortation, were especially dear to theologians of freedom who, during the ‘70s and ‘80s, sparked an ecclesiastical debate in Latin America, which spread mainly across Third World countries. This was up until some “hasty moves” were condemned and sanctioned by the Holy See.
Basic Ecclesiastical Communities (BEC) became particularly widespread during that time.
These were ecumenical groups, committed to living a faith of participation in society’s problems, which took root particularly in Brazil and Nicaragua.
Almost 100.000 of these groups sprouted up in Brazil, thanks to the support of the Cardinal of São Paulo, Paulo E. Arns and Bishop Helder P. Câmara. In Nicaragua, numerous priests and Catholic lay people took part in the armed fight against A. Somoza’s dictatorship, after which, priests like Ernesto Cardenal and Miguel D’Escoto became members of the Sandinista government.
The third CELAM (Latin American Episcopal Conference) meeting held in Puebla, Mexico in 1979, although reaffirming and developing the principles that were set out in Medellin, also highlighted the emergence of a strong opposition to the liberation theology theories, led by conservatives. This opposition gained momentum in the ‘80s thanks to the support of John Paul II.
The main masterminds of liberation theology were progressively moved away from top positions and their field of action was gradually reduced. An example par excellence of this was the case of Leonardo Boff, a Franciscan monk, who left the order in 1992, after number ecclesiastical trials. Now, with a tone of distressed social concern, the exhortation that resulted from the Synod for Africa, clearly indicates the need to combat “exploitation and local and foreign embezzlement.”
Such acts deprive African people of their natural resources, increasing “poverty” and preventing “African people from consolidating their own economies. Thus, the Pope asked governments to protect “basic goods such as land and water”, for the sake of future generations and peace.
The Pope’s reference to the former dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Bernardin Gantin (who was always attentive to the requests of the liberation theology movement), whom he remembers with great affection, was significant in this. Benedict XVI praised the cardinal’s “sense of discernment, his ability of avoiding certain phrasing, whilst understanding what was essential and what lacked sense altogether.
“Benin is the country of my dear friend, Cardinal Bernardin Gantin and I had always wanted to come and pray one day over his grave,” Benedict XVI stated. “Truly he was a great friend to me. … To visit the country of Cardinal Gantin, a great representative of Catholic Africa, of humane and civil Africa, is one of the reasons I chose to come here.”
The Pope also recalled: “I saw Cardinal Gantin for the first time at my ordination as Archbishop of Munich in 1976. He had come because one of his former students was a disciple of mine. That had been the beginning of a friendship between us, without our having met. [Then,] on that important day of my Episcopal ordination, it was beautiful for me to meet this young African bishop full of faith, full of joy and courage.”
“Then, we worked together a great deal, above all when he was the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and then in the College of Cardinals. I always marvelled at his deep and practical intelligence, his sense of discernment, to not trip over beautiful ideological phrases but to grasp what's essential and what doesn't make sense. He also had a true sense of humour which was very beautiful” he added. And above all, Joseph Ratzinger highlighted, “he was a man of deep faith and prayer. All this made Cardinal Gantin not just a friend, but an example. He was a great African Catholic bishop, and I'm truly happy now that I'm able to pray at his tomb and to feel his closeness, his great faith, which will always make him an example for me and a friend.”
The revival of the preferential option for poor, in Africa, does not mean that the current of Catholic thought which grew in Latin America and tends to highlight the values of social and political emancipation (contained within the Christian message) will be washed away. Especially since grassroots Catholics attribute the “normalisation” of the South American clergy and Episcopate during the ‘80s and ‘90s, to Pope John Paul II. They also credit him for filling the Church with representatives of the Opus Dei and the Legion of Christ, pushing liberalisation theologians who had moved the Church’s barycentre too far towards the left, to the sidelines. This encouraged dialogue with that communism which the Vatican was busy fighting in Eastern Europe.
The current dramatic haemorrhage of faithful in the Catholic Church, who leave to join the Evangelical sects seems to also be the cause of the marginalisation of the priests closest to the popular classes and the mass of people from the favelas. The movement was born from the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM) held in 1968, in Medellin, Colombia, when representatives of the subcontinent’s Church hierarchy sided with the most disadvantaged sections of Latin American society, supporting them in their battle and declaring themselves in favour of a socially active people’s Church.
The concept became universally known, following the publication of an essay entitled “Liberation Theology” (1971) by Peruvian priest, Gustavo Gutiérrez. Its spread throughout the Latin American continent during the military dictatorships and heavily repressive regimes of the ‘70s, (which often caused acute friction between vast sections of the Catholic Church and the established powers), drove liberation theologians to come up with increasingly radical answers to the worsening political and social crisis in Latin America.