Gustavo Guti茅rrez, a Peruvian priest and scholar who was regarded as the father of Latin American liberation theology, a far-reaching school of thought and action born of solidarity with poor and marginalized people, died Tuesday in his apartment in Lima, Peru. He was 96.
The cause was pneumonia, said Leo Guardado, a friend and former assistant who is now a theology professor at Fordham University in New York.
Guti茅rrez, a Dominican priest, was best known as the author of 鈥淭eolog铆a de la Liberaci贸n,鈥� a landmark work of social and theological analysis originally published in Spanish in 1971 and first available in English in 1973 as 鈥淎 Theology of Liberation.鈥� In that book, he asserted that the God of the Jewish and Christian traditions exhibits a preferential commitment to the poor.
The book anticipated movements in the United States to establish housing and health care as basic human rights, and it continues to be taught in seminaries and universities.
Guti茅rrez argued that the salvation of the poor was not achievable only in an otherworldly afterlife, as the church had long taught, but could also be realized within history. To know God, he insisted, people must work to eliminate poverty and unjust conditions on Earth. The church must concern itself with life in this world, not the next.
To speak of a preferential option for the poor was not 鈥渁 question of idealizing poverty,鈥� Guti茅rrez wrote, 鈥渂ut rather of taking it on as it is 鈥� as evil 鈥� to protest against it and to struggle to abolish it.鈥�
Once considered revolutionary, the notion of empathy and advocacy for the poor is now a central tenet of Roman Catholic social teaching.
鈥淲e love God by loving our neighbor,鈥� Guti茅rrez contended. 鈥淥nly then will God be with us.鈥�
Like the Jesus of the gospels, who lived with the outcasts of his day, he worked much of his life in the R铆mac barrio of Lima, Peru鈥檚 capital, where, as a parish priest and director of the Bartolem茅 de Las Casas Institute, he ministered to the poor.
His experience amid the squalor of R铆mac led him to view poverty as a form of evil that has not only an economic dimension but also a spiritual one. To be poor, he said in a 2016 interview with America, a magazine published by the Jesuits, is to be invisible and, all too often, to suffer a premature and unjust death.
鈥淎 Theology of Liberation鈥� immediately gained traction among clergy and lay people struggling against oppressive economic and political systems in Guti茅rrez鈥檚 native Latin America. The book inspired multitudes in Asia and Africa as well.
His ideas even found resonance outside the church, in the work of global activists such as Paul Farmer, a physician, Harvard University professor and United Nations deputy special envoy for Haiti, who founded the nonprofit organization Partners in Health, which provides health care to poor people throughout the world.
Guti茅rrez鈥檚 theology was not without its detractors. It was criticized by scholars living in capitalist countries for its use of Marxist social analysis to expose unjust political systems in the third world, many of them supported by first world powers.
His work also came under fire from feminists for not explicitly addressing the sexual oppression of poor women in Latin America. And despite being steeped in the theological populism of the Second Vatican Council, sessions of which Guti茅rrez attended in Rome in the early 1960s, his writings fell under the scrutiny of the Vatican for deviating from Catholic orthodoxy.
More recently, his theology found favor with Pope Francis, the first Latin American pontiff, who invited him to a meeting at the Vatican in 2013. In L鈥橭sservatore Romano, the semiofficial newspaper of the Vatican, the pope declared that liberation theology can no longer 鈥渞emain in the shadows to which it has been relegated for some years, at least in Europe.鈥�
Gustavo Guti茅rrez Merino, a mestizo of Hispanic and Quechua Indian descent, was born June 8, 1928, in the Montserrat barrio of Lima. He had polio as a child and spent most of his teenage years confined to bed. His infirmity inspired him to pursue a career in medicine 鈥� he earned a degree from the National University of Peru in 1950 鈥� before ultimately choosing the priesthood.
Guti茅rrez did his graduate work in Europe, where he studied philosophy, psychology and theology at universities in Belgium, France and Italy. Returning to the slums of Lima in the late 1950s, he discovered that the dominant theology of the Northern Hemisphere had little relevance in the context of Latin America.
鈥淭he history of humanity has been written 鈥榳ith a white hand,鈥� from the side of the dominators,鈥� he observed, echoing the writings of his friend and fellow Peruvian Jos茅 Mar铆a Arguedas, to whom, along with the Brazilian priest Henrique Pereira Neto, 鈥淎 Theology of Liberation鈥� was dedicated. 鈥淗istory鈥檚 losers have another outlook.鈥�
鈥淭he theology of liberation,鈥� Guti茅rrez insisted, 鈥渂egins from the questions asked by the poor and plundered of the world, by those 鈥榳ithout a history.鈥欌��
This necessity of reading history from the underside, and of having theology issue from the perspective of oppressed people rather than being imposed from without by the academy or the church, became a hallmark of liberation theology. Likewise was Guti茅rrez鈥檚 commitment to grassroots ecclesial communities, as the locus of the struggle for liberation.
The fundamental themes of Latin American liberation theology were first given voice in documents drafted by Guti茅rrez and Oscar Romero 鈥� a Salvadoran archbishop assassinated in 1980 for speaking out against social injustice 鈥� after a historic series of meetings of priests that culminated in a gathering of bishops in Medell铆n, Colombia, in 1968.
Guti茅rrez also wrote much of what emerged from the Latin American Episcopal Council held in Puebla, Mexico, in 1979. But he would not receive his doctorate in theology, from the Catholic University of Lyon in France, until 1985, almost 15 years after the initial publication of 鈥淎 Theology of Liberation.鈥�
Guti茅rrez wrote more than a dozen books and taught at several institutions over the years, including the Pontifical University of Peru and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, where he was the John Cardinal O鈥橦ara professor of theology from 2001 until his retirement in 2018, when he was named professor emeritus. He was made a member of the French Legion of Honor in 1993 and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002.
Even into his 80s 鈥� and long after he was recognized as one of most influential theologians of the 20th century 鈥� Guti茅rrez spent half of each year away from Notre Dame working in the slums of Lima.
He is survived by an older sister.
Guti茅rrez always knew that his vision of human redemption, with its summons to political action in solidarity with the oppressed, would be controversial; he was, after all, calling the basic assumptions of the capitalist-bred churches of the United States and Europe to moral and political account.
鈥淟atin American misery and injustice go too deep to be responsive to palliatives,鈥� he wrote in 1983 in 鈥淭he Power of the Poor in History.鈥� 鈥淗ence we speak of social revolution, not reform; of liberation, not development; of socialism, not the modernization of the prevailing system. 鈥楻ealists鈥� call these statements romantic and utopian. And they should, for the rationality of these statements is of a kind quite unfamiliar to them.鈥�
This article originally appeared in . 漏 2024 The New York Times
