MEETING

On September 11 Pope Francis met, in a private audience, Dominican Father GUSTAVO GUTIÉRREZ, one of the founders of liberation theology and author of a book entitled Liberation Theology (1971), regarded as the manifesto of that current of thought within the Catholic Church.

Father Gustavo Gutierrez is pictured in 2007 on the campus of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. (CNS photo)

Liberation theology developed in the 1960s and 1970s in response to the spread of military dictatorships and repressive re­gimes in Latin America.

Its founders and leading representatives came from Latin America, with some contribution from European Marxists. Over the years, there were cases of doctrinal excesses, which led to many liberation theologians being ostracized.

Some Jesuits got so close to a radical version of liberation theology that then-Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio, superior of the Jesuits’ Argentinian province, warned his priests against getting involved in politics. The future Pope did everything he could to protect the needy and persecuted under the military junta.

Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller.

The informal meeting between the Holy Father and Gutiérrez, which did not feature on the Pope’s agenda, took place at St. Martha’s House, the Holy Father’s residence.

There was no official communication after Pope Francis’ audience with Father Gutiérrez. The director of the Vatican press office, Father Federico Lombardi, only confirmed that there had been a meeting between the Holy Father and the Peruvian theologian.

It was Archbishop Gerhard ­Mül­ler who announced the meeting between the Pope and Gutiérrez at the Basilica of St. Barbara, Mantua, a town in northern Italy, on Sunday, September 8, during a book release.

The book, co-authored by Müller and Gutiérrez, entitled Dalla parte dei poveri. Teologia della liberazione e teologia della Chiesa (“On the Side of the Poor: Liberation Theology and the Theology of the Church”) and published by Editrice Missionaria Italiana, was recently reprinted and re-presented by its authors at the Literary Festival of Mantua.

A memorial imprinted with the date October 16, 1943, recalls the Nazi deportation of Jews from their neighborhood in Rome. Pope Francis remembered the deportation in an October 11 speech during a meeting with a delegation from Rome’s Jewish community. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

ANNIVERSARIES

At a meeting October 11 with members of Rome’s Jewish community, POPE FRANCIS denounced anti-Semitism and recalled the 1943 deportation of more than 1,000 of the city’s Jews to concentration camps — an incident that has proven a source of polemics between the papacy and some Jewish leaders. “It’s a contradiction for a Christian to be anti-Semitic; his roots are in part Jewish,” the Pope said October 11. “May anti-Semitism be banished from the heart and the life of every man and woman.” Pope Francis gave a delegation led by Rabbi Riccardo Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, a message commemorating the 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEPORTATION OF ROME’S JEWS on October 16, 1943. Of the more than 1,000 people deported by the German occupiers that day, only 16 eventually returned. “While we return in memory to those tragic hours of October 1943, it is our duty to keep before our eyes the destiny of those deportees,” the Pope wrote, “to imagine their fear, their pain, their desperation, so as not to forget them, to keep them alive in our memory and in our prayer, along with their families, their relatives and friends who mourned their loss and who remain disheartened by the depths of barbarity to which humankind can sink.” —ITV Staff

On June 27-29, the FRATERNITY OF ST. PETER (FSSP), at their headquarters in Wigratzbad (Germany), began a celebration of the 25TH ANNIVERSARY of their foundation.

This Silver Jubilee celebration culminated with a series of ceremonies and events on the feast of St. Luke, October 18, 2013, at the FSSP personal parish in Rome, Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini. The event began with a solemn Thanksgiving Mass (Extraordinary Rite) celebrated by the superior general, US-born Father John Berg, in late morning. After the Mass, Vespers and Benediction were celebrated in early afternoon, followed by a reception in the church refectory. The day was closed by the Edinburgh-based St. Andrew Camerata Choir which presented a concert of sacred music in the evening.

Celebrations for the Silver Jubilee were also scheduled in the US and in Paris, France. The FSSP North American District of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) will be celebrating the 25th anniversary with a Pontifical Mass Friday, November 15, at 10 am at the Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala (San Diego, CA), with Archbishop Cordileone as celebrant. Although the FSSP has a parish, St. Anne, in the Diocese of San Diego, the Mass will at the Mission San Diego because of that mission’s historical status.

 

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