Pope appoints Brazilian cardinal, friendly to Liberation Theology, to top Vatican post

[struggle4progress]

By Gerard O'Connell
11/1/2006
UCANews (www.ucanews.com)

ROME (UCAN) – ... The Vatican announced on Oct. 31 that the pope had accepted the resignation of Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos .. and named Cardinal Claudio Hummes of Sao Paolo to succeed him ...

The 72-year-old Brazilian is generally regarded as a moderate theologian, friendly to Liberation Theology, a strong supporter of basic Christian communities and passionately concerned for justice and the poor.

In a February 2002 interview he gave while preaching at a Lenten retreat for Pope John Paul and senior officials of the Roman curia, he said the church must dialogue. "She must listen to all the cultures, to all ways of thinking, to all religions," he stated ...

http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=21848


Liberation theology expert named to Vatican
Cardinal Claudio Hummes of Brazil named to Congregation of the Clergy.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
by Spero News

Last year Cardinal Hummes was keynote speaker at the Vatican's commemoration of Vatican Council II document “Gaudium et Spes”, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World ...

The Cardinal told the conference that while the Church is called to promote unity, progress and dialogue, "a servant church must have as its priority solidarity with the poor."

In addition, he said, in order to serve the world and show it the path to salvation, the Church must be in dialogue with the world, with politicians and economists, with members of other religions and with scientists.

"However, this always must be a dialogue and not the imposition of the church's convictions and methods," he said. The church must "propose and not impose, serve and not dominate."

http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idarticle=6353


April 16, 2005, 1:06AM
Hummes seen as contender for papacy
Leading the faithful in Brazil, the archbishop of São Paulo wants a church open to change and appealing to youth
By ANDREW DOWNIE and JOHN OTIS
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL - When Brazil's military rulers cracked down on trade unions and closed their headquarters in the early 1980s, Roman Catholic Bishop Claudio Hummes knew which side he was on ... And during a tense standoff between strikers and soldiers, Hummes convinced the troops that they should stand down ... Under the military dictatorship, which ended in 1985, the Catholic Church represented one of the few independent voices in Brazil, and Hummes used the bully pulpit to support organized labor. He also emerged as an influential backer of the Landless Workers Movement, a group that promotes peasant invasions of idle farms and ranches ... But .. he distanced himself from liberation theology, which promotes greater efforts by grass-roots religious communities to improve the lot of the poor, when John Paul II came out against the controversial movement.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/pope/3137161.html


Monday, April 11, 2005 - Page updated at 11:10 a.m.
Close-up
Latin American Catholics' problem with Pope John Paul II
By Chris Kraul and Henry Chu
Los Angeles Times

... There are scattered signs of a revival of liberation theology, driven by desperate conditions of the poor that cry out for activism. Central to the doctrine were small communal groups that clerics such as Ventura organized to promote self-awareness and activism ...

Leading Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff was ordered in 1984 to explain himself before a Vatican tribunal and to observe a year of "obsequious silence" during which the Franciscan monk was forbidden to speak out publicly or publish writings. Facing another such sentence in the early 1990s, Boff later left the church ...

After John Paul's ascension in 1978, Vatican commissions visited Romero two times demanding he explain his outspoken criticism of El Salvador's military rulers and the seeming impunity of death squads that killed 21 priests and nuns ...

Cardinal Claudio Hummes of São Paolo, one of those mentioned as a leading contender to succeed John Paul, said last week that the next pope needs to be "especially at the service of the poor and most excluded." ...

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002237743_popelatam11.html

[Justitia]

1. Very interesting. I thought this entire line of thought (liberation theology) had been suppressed.

[struggle4progress]

2. Church power struggles are often about nuance. Pope JP II ...

... with his Polish background could never distinguish Marxist analysis from the Stalinist totalitarianism his homeland experienced, and Pope B, when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, hated liberation theology.

On the other hand, liberation theology seems in many ways a natural confluence of the church's social teachings, of the social theory tools provided by Marx, of the years of dialog between twentieth century Christians and Marxists, and of the reformative and ecumenical call of Vatican II.

So naturally, a church power struggle resulted. I think JP II really wanted to squash this theology, and those who stayed with the church (instead of leaving in disgust) looked for ways to use some insights while trying to avoid scandal or offense.

We'll see. I doubt if we'll see a great public resurgence under Pope B, but many people learned a lot from liberation theology and many will ultimately be unwilling to abandon those insights.

[Vidar]

3. Damn. I actually agree with Biggy Ratz for the first time.