THE POPE has called liberation theology deceitful and Marxist, and told Brazilian bishops to steer clear of it when he met them at the Vatican earlier this month.Liberation theology took root in Latin America in the 1960s, when the Second Vatican Council urged the Church to show solidarity with humanity “and especially the poor”, a call for worship combined with political action to bring about social justice.
As Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) decried it as the invention of European Marxists, and proceeded to try to suppress it.
Its visible consequences had been “rebellion, division, dissent, offence, anarchy”, he told the Brazilian bishops at the meeting, saying that these things were “still being felt, creating in your diocesan communities great pain and a great loss of living strength”.
The Pope commended to the bishops his 1984 document Libertatis Nuntius, and the 1986 “Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation”.
On a pontifical visit to Brazil in May 2007, he said that in those documents, “we tried to rid ourselves of false millenarianisms and of an erroneous combination of Church and politics, of faith and politics; and to show that the Church’s specific mission is precisely to come up with a response to the thirst for God and . . . to teach the personal and social virtues that are the necessary conditions for the development of a sense of lawfulness.”
Campaigners for reform in the Roman Catholic Church have condemned the Pope’s remarks. Vittorio Bellavite of We Are Church told Ecumenical News International last week: “The obstinacy and doggedness of the reigning pontiff against liberation theology is just amazing. Ratzinger forgets how many priests, nuns and lay people, inspired by this theology, have spent their lives in Latin America defending the rights and the dignity of oppressed people.”
The mission agency the USPG has a very strong relationship with the Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil, where its eight projects include work with landless people. One of its mission companions, the Revd Nicholas Wheeler from the diocese of London, works in Cidade de Deus (City of God), a disadvantaged community in Rio de Janeiro and a notorious haven for drug-trafficking and gun crime.
Another, Saulo de Barros, was consecrated as the diocese of the Amazon’s first Bishop in October 2006. He and his wife, Ruth, work in Belém, the largest city in the state of Pará, a place with high levels of illiteracy and infant mortality, and low levels of income.
Bishop Michael Doe, general secretary of USPG, said on Monday: “I don’t know how the Pope is defining liberation theology, but I hope very much that he is not demeaning those who work primarily with the poor, or who struggle against injustice, in the name of Christ.
“I was myself in Brasilia two or three years ago in one of the shanty towns . . . The Anglican priest there celebrates the eucharist, leads the campaigns for water and electricity, and helps people to seek change by hearing what the Bible says about God, who wants to free his people.
“His ministry, which USPG helps to fund, is about putting the gospel into action. That, for me, is what liberation theology is all about.”
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