By Bill Friskics-Warren
Gustavo Gutiérrez, a Peruvian priest and academic recognized as the founder of Latin American liberation theology—a significant movement aimed at standing alongside the impoverished and marginalized—passed away on Tuesday in his Lima apartment, Peru. He was 96.
According to Leo Guardado, a friend and former aide who now teaches theology at Fordham University in New York, the cause was pneumonia.
Gutiérrez, a Dominican priest, gained acclaim as the author of “Teología de la Liberación,” a pivotal work of social and theological critique first published in Spanish in 1971 and released in English in 1973 as “A Theology of Liberation.” In this influential text, he posited that the deity of the Jewish and Christian faiths displays a preferential concern for the impoverished.
The book foretold movements in the United States advocating for housing and healthcare as fundamental human rights, and it remains a staple in seminaries and universities today.
Gutiérrez contended that the salvation of the poor was not solely attainable in an afterlife, as traditionally suggested by the church, but could also manifest historically. He argued that to truly know God, one must actively work against poverty and inequality. The church was called to engage with the realities of this existence, rather than solely concerning itself with the hereafter.
To express a preferential option for the poor was not to “idealize poverty,” Gutiérrez wrote, “but to confront it as it is — as an evil — to denounce it and to strive to eradicate it.”
Once viewed as radical, the idea of empathy and support for the marginalized has now become a fundamental principle of Roman Catholic social doctrine.
“We express our love for God through our love for our neighbor,” Gutiérrez argued. “Only then will we find God among us.”
Much like the Jesus depicted in the gospels, who associated with the outcasts of his time, he dedicated a significant portion of his life to the Rímac neighborhood of Lima, Peru’s capital, where he served as a parish priest and led the Bartolemé de Las Casas Institute, providing support to those in need.
His experiences amidst the impoverished conditions of Rímac shaped his perspective, leading him to recognize poverty as a multifaceted evil encompassing both economic and spiritual dimensions. In a 2016 interview with America, a magazine produced by the Jesuits, he remarked that being poor often translates to being invisible and, too frequently, enduring untimely and unjust deaths.
“A Theology of Liberation” quickly garnered interest among clergy and laypersons contesting oppressive systems in Gutiérrez’s home region of Latin America and inspired numerous individuals in Asia and Africa.
His ideas resonated beyond religious contexts, influencing global advocates such as Paul Farmer, a physician, Harvard professor, and United Nations deputy special envoy for Haiti, who established the nonprofit organization Partners in Health, dedicated to providing healthcare to impoverished populations globally.
Gutiérrez’s theology was not without controversy. It faced criticism from scholars in capitalist nations for employing Marxist social theories to illuminate the unjust political landscapes of the Global South, many of which were backed by powerful nations.
Feminists also scrutinized his work for not sufficiently addressing the sexual oppression of marginalized women in Latin America. Moreover, despite his immersion in the theological populism fostered by the Second Vatican Council, which he participated in during the early 1960s, his writings attracted attention from the Vatican for straying from Catholic orthodoxy.
More recently, Pope Francis, the first Latin American pope, embraced his theology, inviting Gutiérrez to a Vatican meeting in 2013. In L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s semiofficial publication, the pope proclaimed that liberation theology should no longer be “hidden in the shadows it has occupied for some years, particularly in Europe.”
Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino, of mixed Hispanic and Quechua Indian heritage, was born on June 8, 1928, in the Montserrat neighborhood of Lima. He suffered from polio in his youth, spending much of his adolescence confined to bed, which motivated him to aspire to a medical career—he earned his degree from the National University of Peru in 1950—before ultimately deciding to pursue the priesthood.
Gutiérrez furthered his education in Europe, studying philosophy, psychology, and theology at institutions in Belgium, France, and Italy. Upon returning to Lima’s impoverished neighborhoods in the late 1950s, he realized that the prevailing theology from the Northern Hemisphere had minimal relevance to the Latin American context.
“The narrative of humanity has been crafted ‘with a white hand,’ from the perspective of the oppressors,” he noted, reflecting the thoughts of his friend and fellow Peruvian José María Arguedas, to whom, alongside Brazilian priest Henrique Pereira Neto, “A Theology of Liberation” was dedicated. “The ‘losers’ of history possess a different understanding.”
“Liberation theology,” Gutiérrez insisted, “emerges from the inquiries posed by the world’s impoverished and dispossessed, those ‘without a history.’”
This imperative to interpret history from the perspective of the oppressed, and for theology to originate from the voices of these individuals rather than being dictated by the academy or the church, became foundational to liberation theology. Equally significant was Gutiérrez’s dedication to grassroots ecclesial communities as central to the struggle for liberation.
The core concepts of Latin American liberation theology were first articulated in documents penned by Gutiérrez and Oscar Romero—a Salvadoran archbishop killed in 1980 for his outspokenness on social justice—following a significant series of meetings among priests culminating in a bishops’ gathering in Medellín, Colombia, in 1968.
Gutiérrez also contributed significantly to the discussions at the Latin American Episcopal Council held in Puebla, Mexico, in 1979. However, he would not obtain his doctorate in theology from the Catholic University of Lyon in France until 1985, nearly 15 years after the initial release of “A Theology of Liberation.”
Over the years, Gutiérrez authored more than a dozen books and taught at various institutions, including the Pontifical University of Peru and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, where he held the John Cardinal O’Hara chair of theology from 2001 until his retirement in 2018, subsequently being named professor emeritus. He was honored with membership in the French Legion of Honor in 1993 and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002.
Even into his 80s—long after gaining recognition as a leading theologian of the 20th century—Gutiérrez devoted half of each year away from Notre Dame, working in the slums of Lima.
He is survived by an elder sister.
Gutiérrez always recognized that his vision of human redemption, along with its call for political engagement in solidarity with the oppressed, would spark debate; after all, he was challenging the foundational beliefs of the capitalist-influenced churches in the United States and Europe.
“The depth of Latin American suffering and injustice transcends mere palliatives,” he asserted in 1983 in “The Power of the Poor in History.” “Thus, we refer to social revolution, not reform; liberation, not development; socialism, not merely the modernization of the existing system. Those who consider themselves ‘realists’ label these declarations as romantic and utopian. And rightfully so, for the rationality behind these statements is of a nature quite alien to them.”
