Fr Gustavo Gutiérrez, father of liberation theology, dead at 96

Fr Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian Dominican priest and author known as the “father of liberation theology,” died Tuesday in his native Lima at 96. The internationally influential theologian had been in particularly poor health since late September.

The announcement of his death was made by his religious order, which noted the cause as pneumonia. 

“[He] has left for the House of the Father,” they posted on social media. “We ask that you accompany us with your prayers so that our dear brother enjoys eternal life.”

Born to mestizo parentage in 1928 near the end of Augusto Leguía’s dictatorship in Peru, Gutiérrez grew up in the midst of the Great Depression and political turmoil. The social unrest in his home country continued throughout his youth and young adulthood, experiences he would later say helped shape his landmark theology.

After a formative battle with osteomyelitis in his middle and high school years, Gutiérrez studied medicine before deciding to become a priest. He was sent to Europe for his studies, where he studied under several minds associated with the Nouvelle Théologie of the Second Vatican Council, including the Jesuit priest Henri de Lubac and two Dominicans in Yves Congar and Marie-Dominique Chenu.

Gutiérrez was ordained a diocesan priest in 1959, assigned to the slums of Peru to minister in local parishes and teach at the country’s Pontifical Catholic University. There in Lima, influenced by the Catholic Action movement active among his students, Gutiérrez incubated what would become Latin American liberation theology. It was the first in a long line of traditions stemming from what Gutierrez and others coined as the “preferential option for the poor.”

Citing the documents of Vatican II, Gutiérrez rejected the overly intellectual strains of his own theological education, which he saw as divorced from the lived realities of the marginalized and oppressed. It is said that the guiding question of his work was, “How do we convey to the poor that God loves them?”

Gutiérrez published “A Theology of Liberation” in 1971, following up a related lecture three years earlier at a conference of priests and laypeople in Peru. Calling poverty “scandalous” from a spiritual perspective, he inveighed against political and ecclesial powers alike insofar as they were agents of suffering rather than its relievers. He also tied his framework to the Kingdom of God, which he pictured as an inbreaking of justice in the real world.

Influenced by Marxist thought from his studies in Europe—and ministering during a time of backlash to the ruling left-wing military junta in Peru—Gutiérrez came under fire from the highest echelons of the Church hierarchy. Despite taking pains to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in his writings and speeches, Gutierrez was investigated by the Vatican’s then doctrine chief, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, (later Pope Benedict XVI), on the orders of Pope John Paul II. 

Ratzinger released critiques of supposed links between liberation theology and Marxism in 1984 and 1986, the latter year marking the release of one of Gutiérrez’s most popular books, “On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent.”

Gutiérrez also faced criticism in Peru, where a Vatican-influenced document on liberation theology was published by the nation's bishops just months after Ratzinger’s in 1984. More than a decade later, after much of the tension had cooled, his own archbishop, Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne of Peru, continued to apply pressure, eventually leading to Gutiérrez’s exodus from the country.

He settled in the United States and took a teaching post at the University of Notre Dame, shortly after joining the Dominicans near the turn of the millennium.

“I was attracted to their profound understanding of the intimate relationship that should exist between theology, spirituality, and the actual preaching of the Gospel,” Gutiérrez told America magazine in 2003.

“My subsequent research into the life of Bartolomé de Las Casas and his ardent defense of the poor of his time (the Indigenous people and Black slaves) also played an important role in my decision.”

Gutiérrez’s theological legacy remains far-reaching, helping to spawn the traditions of Black liberation theology—initially a Protestant movement in the United States—and a wave of similar ecumenical movements in other cultural contexts.

Gutiérrez has also experienced a sort of rehabilitation in the eyes of the Vatican under Pope Francis, who has focused on justice issues. The two Latin Americans met at the Vatican just months after Francis' election as pope in 2013 and again in late 2014. The pope also sent Gutiérrez a 90th birthday letter in 2018 honoring his “preferential love for the poor and those discarded from society.”

“Thank you for all your efforts and for your way of challenging the conscience of each one, so that no one remains indifferent to the drama of poverty and exclusion.”

In his final years, Gutiérrez returned full-time to his hometown of Lima, where he had continued to spend time each year working with the poor, even during his tenure in Indiana. He retired from Notre Dame in 2018.

During his teaching career, which spanned several universities in the Americas and in Europe, Gutiérrez received various accolades, including the French Legion of Honor, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002.

Following his death, a wake service, vespers, and Mass were held in Gutierrez’s memory at the Dominican residence in Lima on Wednesday. A funeral Mass will take place on Thursday at 11am PT in the Basilica of the Most Holy Rosary, celebrated by Cardinal-elect Carlos Castillo Mattasoglio, Archbishop of Lima. Livestreams will be available on Facebook and YouTube.

Following the funeral, Gutiérrez's body will be transferred to his former parish, Cristo Redentor in the Rímac district. Burial will take place thereafter at El Ángel Cemetery. The ceremonies will be open to the public.

“We are infinitely grateful for the expressions of appreciation and closeness towards our religious order, family, and friends of the person who was our dear brother Gustavo Gutierrez, OP, the ‘prophet of the poor,’” the Dominicans said in a statement.

“We thank God for the great legacy that our brother Gustavo has left to the Church and society.”

Nate Tinner-Williams is co-founder and editor of Black Catholic Messenger.

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