After the passing of Gustavo Gutiérrez in October, Joseph Forde reflects on the legacy of his liberation theology and the impact he had on Pope Francis. 

Gustavo Gutiérrez, the esteemed Peruvian, Roman Catholic philosopher, theologian and Dominican priest, died on 22 October, 2024 at the age of 96. His book, A Theology of Liberation ― published in 1971 ― was foundational to the development of Roman Catholic liberation theology, and is one of the most important books to have been published by a Catholic theologian in the twentieth century.

In that book, Gutiérrez had begun to develop his thinking on the ‘preferential option for the poor’; a concept that places a primacy on the passages in the Bible that refer to the need for the wellbeing of the poor and the powerless to be given a priority. The ‘option for the poor’ concept had been coined by Fr. Pedro Arrupe, Superior General of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1968, in a letter to the Jesuits of Latin America. However, it was Gutiérrez who had grasped its full theo-political significance, seeing a need for the Catholic Church in Latin America to influence public policy in ways that would advance the cause of social justice, thereby reducing poverty and, crucially, its structural causes.

Gutiérrez’s thinking on liberation theology would later come to be seen by some of the more conservative elements in the Roman Catholic hierarchy ― not least by Pope Benedict XVI ― as too overtly political and materialist/structuralist in its focus (in some ways resembling Marxism), and Gutiérrez’s stock at the Vatican would take a nose dive. However, when Pope Francis was elected to office in March, 2013, it became clear that he had been influenced by the thinking of Gutiérrez in his own spiritual formation, and that he held him in high regard. This was confirmed when he met with him at the Vatican later that year, suggesting that Gutiérrez’s stock was, once again, on the rise. However, it still came as a surprise to many Catholics when a book called ‘On the Side of the Poor: The Theology of Liberation’, appeared in 2015, co-authored by Gutiérrez and Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, the then Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Roman Catholic Church.

When referring to the preferential option for the poor, Gutiérrez and Müller argued a need for Christians to show solidarity with ― and compassion for ― the poor, including in the ways that they seek to influence the shaping of public policy. As such, Gutiérrez and Müller’s contention was that liberation theology is concerned with material aspects of poverty on the lives of the poor, their causes, the need to remedy them, and with the spiritual wellbeing of the poor. Thus, they drew a clear distinction between liberation theology (with its foundations firmly rooted in a theological anthropology) and Marxism (with its historical materialism being devoid of any spiritual dimension).

With this purpose in mind, Gutiérrez and Müller were keen to re-emphasise that liberation theology is a Catholic theology of grace and salvation ‘now applied to history and society’ (p. 81); something Gutiérrez’s classic text of 1971 also made clear, stating: ‘The salvific action of God underlies all human existence’ (p. 153), and: ‘To work, to transform this world, is to become a man [sic] and to build the human community; it is also to save. Likewise, to struggle against misery and exploitation and to build a just society is already part of the saving action’ (p. 159). Hence, for these writers, good works and grace go hand in hand, as, from a Catholic perspective, they must, to attain redemptive liberation via salvation. In this way, the authors show how liberation theology can be reconciled with patristic thinking on these matters, and why, for many Catholics, it should have a place in Roman Catholic theology and spiritual formation.

Since the publication of Gutiérrez’s classic text of 1971, his thinking on liberation theology has had a major influence on some strands of black, feminist, queer and urban theologies, and played a key part in the theological underpinning of Faith in the City ― published by the Church of England in 1985 ― in response to the attacks on the Welfare State being waged by Thatcher’s administration at that time. Bishop David Sheppard ― a co-author of the report ― had been impressed by Gutiérrez’s work, writing a chapter on liberation theology for his book of 1983, Bias to the Poor, that commended his thinking on the preferential option for the poor, stating: ‘But God is to be found among the poor and powerless, those at the margins of society; a Church which seeks to be faithful must learn to listen to such, admit them into its decision-making, and then face the implications for its life as an established institution in society’ (p. 158). Sheppard’s aim was to provide a new line of defence for the William Temple inspired British Welfare State, which he believed to be in peril as a result of the government’s policies on welfare at that time.

However, the inclusion of liberation theology in Faith in the City has since come to be seen by some theologians as misguided. For example, Malcolm Brown, Director of Faith and Public Life for the Church of England, has since argued: ‘Faith in the City was theologically deficient, flirting, as many of us did, with Liberation Theology with insufficient appreciation that urban England and its people were more than a little different from El Salvadorian base communities [of the kind that Gutiérrez’s study had focused on].’ In hindsight, many would now agree that a far better theological anthropology to have adduced in Faith in the City would have been the one that Archbishop William Temple had embodied; namely, the reformist strand of Anglican Socialist tradition out of which his concept of the welfare state had emerged, and to which Thatcher’s polices were ― at least to some degree ― antithetical.

Gutiérrez will be missed by all those who have read his work and been impressed by the liberating emphasis that it exudes, and the theological depth that it displays. Although by no means a theological panacea for all contexts, liberation theology offers an approach to Christian discipleship that places the poor and the marginalised at the forefront of Christian spiritual formation and praxis, and his legacy as one of the most important Catholic theologians of his era, is increasingly being recognised within the Roman Catholic Church and beyond.

Photo by Dominic Chavez/World Bank

Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of LSE Religion and Global Society nor the London School of Economics and Political Science.  

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