Pope Francis is set to meet with Peruvian scholar Gustavo Gutierrez, who is considered the founder of liberation theology.
A report by the Religion News Service noted that the meeting can be a sign of “increasing favor” for liberation theology, which has been a subject to hostility and censure in the Vatican.
Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, announced the coming meeting on September 8.
Liberation theology arose as a Catholic response to the Marxist movements that fought Latin America’s military dictatorships in the 1960s and ’70s. It criticized the church’s close relations, including often overt support, with the regimes.
It affirmed that, rather then just focusing on seeking salvation in the afterlife, Catholics should act in the here and now against unjust societies that breed poverty and need.
In his 1971 book, Gutierrez wrote that the church should have a “preferential option for the poor,” following the example of Jesus, who chose to live mostly with poor and marginalized people.
In the ’80s, the Vatican’s doctrinal office, then headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who later became Benedict XVI) condemned liberation theology for its “serious ideological deviations.”
The RNS report said the coming meeting between Pope Francis and Gutierrez “signaled a thaw in the tension between liberation theology and the Vatican.
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