Pope: Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez was ‘a great man of the Church’

By Devin Watkins

“Today, I think of Gustavo. Gustavo Gutiérrez. A great man. A man of the Church.”

Pope Francis made the remark in a video message shown at the funeral of Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez, OP.

Widely known as the founder of liberation theology, which prioritizes the Church’s care for the poor, Fr. Gutiérrez’s mortal remains were laid to rest at Mass in Lima, Peru, on Thursday.

In his message, Pope Francis recalled that Fr. Gutiérrez “knew how to remain silent when he needed to be silent; he knew how to suffer when he had to suffer”.

The then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led at the time by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), carried out an investigation into liberation theology. The investigation cleared Fr. Gutiérrez’s writings of any doctrinal error.

Fr. Gutiérrez, said Pope Francis in his message, “managed to carry forward so much apostolic fruit and such rich theology. May he rest in peace.”

In 2014, Pope Francis wrote the introduction to a book entitled “Poor for the Poor: The Mission of the Church,” to which Fr. Gutiérrez contributed two chapters.

The next year, in June 2015, Fr. Gutiérrez spoke to Vatican Radio about liberation theology.

He said the Church’s preferential option for the poor is not an obsession but a recognition that poverty “is a reality of the world, because poverty is destroying, destroying persons and families.”

“Poverty,” he said in the interview, “is death, in the last analysis. The Church understands this better than in the past”.