‘Father of liberation theology’ dies

Gustavo Gutiérrez, the influential Peruvian priest known as ‘the father of liberation theology’ and hailed as a ‘prophet of the poor’, has died in Lima at the age of 96.

WelCom November 2024

Gustavo Gutiérrez, the influential Peruvian priest known as ‘the father of liberation theology’ and hailed as a ‘prophet of the poor’, has died in Lima at the age of 96. Gutiérrez, a theologian and Dominican friar, was a celebrated – and sometimes controversial – proponent of the idea that the Church needed to side with the poor to fight to improve their lot. Liberation theology, which emerged in the turbulent Latin America of the 1960s and 1970s, argued that the Church had a duty to push for fundamental political and structural changes that would end poverty.