Founder of Liberation Theology Hailed at Vatican

[markpkessinger]

9. This may be Pope Francis' most significant departure yet . . .

. . . from his two immediate predecessors! Pope John Paul II, probably because of his experience of Soviet-style communism in Poland, harbored a real animosity towards the Liberation Theology movement because it was considered to be a left-wing movement. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to grasp that the political realities of Latin America were really quite different from those in Poland, and that his experience in Poland didn't really translate very well to Latin America. Under JPII's papacy, with Cardinal Josef Ratzinger as his chief doctrinal henchman, Jesuits (the order to which Liberation Theology's founder belongs -- long the intellectual jewel of the Roman Catholic tradition -- were relegated to institutional backwaters. (Sadly, this wasn't John Paul II's only blindspot -- his abject refusal to even hear about, let alone address. the systematic abuse of children by not insignificant numbers of clergy, one of the most egregious offenders being his friend Marciel Maciel, will stand as one of the great trageidies of his papacy.)