New Vatican prefect: liberation theology threatened my vocation
February 02, 2011
The new prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Religious has revealed that the emphasis on liberation theology in Latin America nearly drove him out of the seminary, and shook his faith in the Catholic Church.
Archbishop Joao Braz de Aziz, the Brazilian prelate who was named in January by Pope Benedict to head the Congregation for Religious, told L’Osservatore Romano that because of his “anguish” over the excesses of liberation theology, “I came very close to abandoning my priestly vocation and even the Church.”
After his ordination to the priesthood in 1972, Archbishop Braz de Aziz studied theology in Rome during the years when liberation theology, with its close ties to Marxism, was gaining influence in Latin America. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, issued statements in 1984 and 1986 cautioning against the movement’s tendency to politicize Christianity.
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