Gustavo Gutiérrez: Pope Francis, Cardinals Müller and Barreto and Catholic leaders remember him

Pope Francis, cardinals and other Catholic leaders from around the world remember Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino, a Peruvian Dominican priest who died on October 22 at the age of 96.

“Today I think of Gustavo Gutiérrez, a great man, a man of the Church who knew how to be silent when he had to be silent, knew how to suffer when he had to suffer, knew how to carry forward so much apostolic fruit and so much rich theology. I think of Gustavo. Let us all pray for him together. May he rest in peace,” said Pope Francis in a video published by the Archbishopric of Lima (Peru) on October 24.

“Gustavo Gutiérrez is one of the great theologians of our century. I already knew his main work, which rightly earned him the title of “father of liberation theology”, when I met him personally in 1988 in Lima, at the Bartolomé de Las Casas Institute,” says Cardinal Müller, prefect emeritus of the Congregation – today the Dicastery – in statements to the National Catholic Register.

“Liberation theology in the true sense of the word is not a Marxist-inspired theology in the sense of ideological progressivism, but rather raises the question of how we can speak of the love of God in the face of the misery of this world. “God himself has made an option for the poor in Christ,” adds the German cardinal.

The cardinal also highlighted that Gutiérrez, author of Liberation Theology: perspectives (1971), “he will go down in history as one of the great theologians and with his humility and sober but profound spirituality and will remain present in the memory of the Church with his thoughts but also with his intercession to God and his son Jesus Christ, of whom “He was a faithful servant on earth.”

John Cavadini, a theologian at the University of Notre Dame (United States) who headed the Theology department when Gustavo Gutiérrez was hired in 1999, remembers the Peruvian Dominican this way: “Unlike some liberation theologians, Father Gustavo cared about for remaining within the limits of the orthodox Catholic faith and ecclesial discipline.”

“As a result, it expanded ecclesial sensitivity in a way that permanently affected, one could say it developed, Catholic social doctrine and, beyond, its theological assumptions,” adds the theologian, in statements to the National Catholic Register.

In his opinion, Gutiérrez’s option for the poor was “strictly speaking, a theological teaching, not a sociopolitical teaching, although of course it had sociopolitical ramifications. What does God prefer? Are God’s preferences the same as ours? Do you also prefer high social status, wealth and political influence as indicators of dignity and worth? Or do you prefer the human being as such, reduced only to himself, without these things?

James Martin, controversial Jesuit priest founder of the pro-LGTB Outreach apostolate, recalled to the “great Gustavo Gutiérrez” as “a leading figure in the life of the Church in the modern era. Rest in peace.”

The Archbishop of Lima (Peru) and future cardinal, Mons. Carlos Castillo, stated in a video: “On the day we celebrate the canonization of John Paul II, an evangelizing Pope and true pastor, we have also had the pain and joy of having lived so many years with Father Gustavo Gutiérrez, who has now gone on to live in the Kingdom of the Father.”

Bishop Castillo also pointed out that Gustavo Gutiérrez “was a tireless defender of the preferential option for the poor, a phrase that he coined and that was integrated into the Magisterium of the Church as a fundamental path to living our faith.”

Jesuit Cardinal Pedro Barreto, Archbishop Emeritus of Huancayo (Peru), recalled with Vatican News a meeting he had with Gutiérrez a few months ago: “He told me that he had lived through difficult times and I am very aware of that, but he was very at peace and with a lot of hope.”

The cardinal related that in that meeting, as a spontaneous gesture, he gave Gutiérrez his pectoral cross. It was an “expression of what he, out of fidelity to the Church, suffered inside: he lived the passion of Christ in the Church with these insults, these denials that some sectors of the Church and outside it made.”

A note of Celam DNA information organ of the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM), states that “Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino was criticized for his clear distance from orthodoxy, which earned him a direct association with Marxism.”

“The election of Pope John Paul II in 1978, his Polish origin and extensive knowledge of the noted Soviet threat, as well as the election of Ronald Reagan as president of the United States in 1980, were events that marked this struggle and stigmatization against the theology of liberation and the voices of its greatest representatives,” the text adds.

“In 2004, the Holy See concluded what it called a clarification process on the points it found problematic in some works of the Peruvian theologian,” the note continues.

ADN Celam then points out that in 2015, at an event organized by Fordham University, Gustavo Gutiérrez said that “liberation theology (…) is against Marxism because for Marx Christianity was oppression and my life’s work is committed to the idea that Christianity is liberation.”

Editor’s note: The note was updated with Pope Francis’ statements about Gustavo Gutiérrez