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October 24, 2024

Gustavo Gutiérrez, Who Brought a "Theology of Liberation" to Catholic Church, Dies at 96
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Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian priest known as the "father of
liberation theology," has died at 96. Liberation theology holds that
ending poverty and helping those in need is an essential mission of the
church. In his seminal 1971 book "A Theology of Liberation," Gutiérrez
wrote that poverty is "an attack on human dignity, and therefore,
contrary to the will of God." The school of thought was popularized in
Latin America through the 1960s and 1970s. Despite pushback from the
Vatican against liberation theology and its anchoring in Marxist
principles, it continued to spread and played a role in political
movements including the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua.


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