The World Forum on Theology and Liberation would like to highlight the passing of Gustavo Gutiérrez, the father of Liberation Theology more than 50 years ago. Of Quechua, indigenous origin, Gustavo Gutiérrez was born in 1928 in Lima, the capital of Peru, a city where he passed away after a life of loyalty to his Peruvian people. This fidelity was manifested in his ministry as a priest in a popular environment, in the heart of a Latin America then marked by deep inequalities, by the exploitation of the country in the name of the ideology of development, as well as by a rivalry between the capitalist Western bloc and the communist Eastern bloc, with violent consequences for the oppressed peoples of Latin America.
In 1967, Gustavo Gutierrez was at the Faculty of Theology of the Université de Montréal, Canada, as a visiting professor. It was during this stay that he developed the idea of a theology that would think of sin and salvation in terms of oppression and liberation. Such a theology, he argues, could be presented as a “theology of liberation.” A theology that would privilege an inductive approach that starts “from below”, from the realities experienced by the poor and the excluded, and that draws on Scripture avenues of liberation. And this, by, for and with the first concerned. Upon his return to his country, he wrote a book, Teología de la liberación: Perspectivas (1971). This book marks the birth of a current of thought that is particularly striking for contemporary Christian thought, in Latin America and then throughout the world, and this up to the present day.
Liberation theology has been constantly transformed over the past 5 decades. Around the world, Christian groups have taken the paths of Gutiérrez, all going to “drink from their own wells” of their knowledge, living traditions and worldviews.
In 1993, the Université de Montréal awarded Gustavo Guttiérez an honoris causa doctorate in recognition of his major theological work. Today, the World Forum on Theology and Liberation – one of the fruits of this movement – has its secretariat at the University of Montreal. At the heart of this global network, we can take the measure of what Gutierrez’s intuition has been able to produce, from the Americas to Africa, from India to the indigenous worlds, from the Middle East to Canada.
Tribute and gratitude to Gustavo Gutiérrez!
Jean-François Roussel