Word: medellin
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Since the 1968 CELAM session at Medellin, Colombia, where ringing calls for political and economic justice were issued, the continent has been roiled by bitter church-state conflicts. Angry debate raged over priestly activism, and some younger priests and missionaries responded to governmental oppression by embracing Marxist ideas under the banner of "liberation theology...
...Pope reaffirmed the Medellin decrees, but spoke of them as "our point of departure." In the decade since, he said, "interpretations have been given that have been at times contradictory, not always correct, not always beneficial for the church." He did not elaborate on this intriguing statement, but sources close to John Paul indicate that he is deeply concerned over Marxist infiltration among Latin American priests. From this first glimpse, it seems that John Paul will seek to fend off further Marxist inroads while blending the church's spiritual resources with firm commitment to social justice and human rights...
...part, the document is the revenge of conservative bishops who were caught off guard by the sudden move leftward at Medellin. Indeed, the secretariat that prepared the agenda for that 1968 conference was loaded with progressive and radical thinkers, among them a Peruvian priest, Gustavo Gutiérrez, who later wrote the influential A Theology of Liberation. But since 1972 the secretary-general of CELAM has been Bogotá's Auxiliary Bishop Alfonso López Trujillo, a staunch young conservative. With the Vatican's encouragement, López Trujillo cleaned out the secretariat, installing priests and laymen...
...social and economic order. In El Salvador, for example, two priests were killed and others were threatened with assassination by government-allied right-wing terrorists for espousing redistribution of property. According to Latin American experts in the Vatican, the Pontiff welcomed the zeal for social change that followed Medellin, but now feels that the emphasis has become too political. He wants the church to help correct social injustice without prescribing any single political approach for Catholics to follow...
...inequities" and "unjust division of land," and cited the enormous gap between rich and poor as "a social scandal in a continent thought to be Christian." At Puebla, the bishops' concluding statement urged, there must be "prophetic criticism of the socioeconomic and political systems reigning in Latin America." Medellin, obviously, will not be set aside, even on orders from Rome, without a struggle...