With "Dilexi Te," Pope Leo Tips His Hand -- Toward Liberation Theology

Ever since Chicagos Robert Prevost became Pope Leo XIV, I've held back from judging the direction of his papacy. When people asked what I thought, I'd say, I'm slow to comment. He hasn't yet tipped his hand.

Now, with the publication of the apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te, the cards are finally on the table. Though written by Pope Francis before his death, Pope Leo has fully endorsed and expanded it embracing it as co-author and carrying forward its message with enthusiasm.

As a liberation theologian, I find this development deeply encouraging. Dilexi Te is a clear affirmation of liberation theology (LT) which I define as reflection on the following of Christ from the viewpoint of the poor and oppressed, committed to escaping their poverty and oppression.

This essay will (1) review what liberation theology is, (2) explain why it so threatens Christian fundamentalists, and (3) show how Dilexi Te embodies its spirit.

Liberation Theology

Liberation theology reflects on Christian faith through the lived experiences of the poor and oppressed. Unlike Christian fundamentalism, it aligns with modern biblical scholarship while remaining accessible to ordinary people, many of them illiterate.

Following the Second Vatican Council (1962-'65), liberation theology swept across the Global South especially Latin America where the Church turned decisively toward the poor. Small Bible study groups became the heart of parish life. Reading Scripture together, peasants and workers discovered their own struggles mirrored in those of the Hebrews oppressed by Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek, and Roman empires.

Most powerfully, they recognized themselves in Jesus of Nazareth: not white, but brown-skinned; not privileged, but working-class; the son of an unwed teenage mother, homeless at birth, a political refugee in Egypt, a friend of prostitutes and outcasts. He was marginalized by his religious community and executed by imperial authorities as a supposed terrorist.

The U.S. Reaction

Such readings of Scripture awakened the poor to the causes of their oppression and infuriated the empires profiting from it. The United States, long dominant over its former colonies, perceived liberation theology as a national security threat.

What followed was, in Noam Chomskys words, the first religious war of the twenty-first century: a U.S.-backed campaign against the Latin American Church. Thousands of priests, nuns, catechists, union organizers, teachers, and social workers were murdered in Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and elsewhere during the 1960s, '70s, and '80s.

Simultaneously, Washington funded fundamentalist televangelists such as Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Bakker and later, figures like Charlie Kirk to counter liberation theology with "old-time religion." Their broadcasts, bankrolled by U.S. dollars, saturated Latin Americas barrios, favelas, and poblaciones.

Unlike liberation theology, fundamentalism endorsed empire, patriarchy, white supremacy, and xenophobia. It rejected modern biblical scholarship especially the historical studies that, ironically, reached many of the same conclusions as liberation theology.

For a time, these tactics succeeded. The CIA and U.S. military even boasted of having defeated liberation theology. Christianity, in the public imagination, came to mean not liberation but obedience focused on heaven and hell, nationalism, and protection of the imperial status quo.

Then Came Francis and Leo

That narrative began to change with the rise of Pope Francis and, now, Pope Leo XIV. Both come from Latin America, where liberation theology was born anew. Pope Leo's Peru, in fact, is the homeland of Gustavo Gutierrez, the movement's founder.

Francis, an Argentinian, initially distrusted liberation theology because of its use of Marxist social analysis. But over time, he came to embrace its core insight: God's preferential option for the poor. He restored theologians like Gutierrez silenced under Pope Benedict XVI to full standing within the Church.

As Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict had authored a cautious 1984 critique, Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation. Even then, he conceded that the biblical God does indeed side with the poor acknowledging that this preference is central to the Judeo-Christian tradition.

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