Lima, Oct 23 (AP) Peruvian theologian the Rev. Gustavo Gutiérrez, the father of the social justice-centred liberation theology that the Vatican once criticised for its Marxist undercurrents, has died. He was 96.
The Dominican Order in Peru announced on social media that the Catholic priest died on Tuesday night at a convent in Lima, the South American country's capital. It did not give a cause of death. Gutiérrez's liberation theology put the poor as its priority and exerted great influence on doctrine and the history of the church in Latin America.
His 1971 book “A Theology of Liberation” had a profound impact by proposing a faith based on social justice focused on the poor and positing that poverty “is a scandalous state, an attack on human dignity, and therefore, contrary to the will of God”. “We thank God for having had a faithful theologian priest who never thought about money, or luxuries, or anything that seemed to make him superior,” Cardinal and Archbishop of Lima Carlos Castillo said in a statement following Gutiérrez's death. “Small as he was, he knew how to announce the Gospel to us with strength and courage in his smallness.
” Gutierrez's thinking attracted many who were outraged by the inequality and dictatorships in several Latin American countries in the 1960s and 1970s. But his ideals were severely criticised by the Vatican, which spent decades disciplining some of its most vocal supporters. Gutiérrez, who himself was never disciplined,.
