Liberal theologians sway Latin America

When President Nicanor Duarte of Paraguay arrived at the Vatican Oct. 29 for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, he planned to present the pontiff with a multicolored poncho as a symbol of Latin America — home to almost half the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics and a region dubbed by Pope John Paul II as “the continent of hope.”

In the end, however, Benedict had to settle for an IOU: Duarte’s bags got lost somewhere between France and Italy, including his gifts for the pope.

That small snafu offers a metaphor for what has been a recent season of discontent for Benedict XVI with regard to Latin America. Despite the best efforts of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s doctrinal czar, to suppress liberation theology in the 1980s and ’90s, this synthesis of Catholic social doctrine and progressive political action is showing surprising signs of life.”*

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