A Roman Catholic cleric’s appearance at the Vatican signals a major turning point that Pope Francis had been heading towards for the past year.  The founder of “Liberation Theology” appeared in the forum that had criticized him so often in past years.

85-year old Father Gustavo Gutierrez of Peru was the surprise speaker Tuesday at the Vatican’s orthodoxy office.  Gutierrez got a hero’s welcome, reportedly applauded upon being introduced and when he rose to speak – a stunning reversal for a cleric who spent much of his life being shunned by his superiors.

The former Pope Benedict XVI, a European archconservative and anti-Communist, devoted much of his tenure to battling Liberation Theology and disciplining some of its most famous defenders.  Benedict argued that they had misinterpreted Jesus’ preference for the poor into a Marxist call for armed rebellion.

Liberation Theology was a powerful force in opposing the fascist dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, and profoundly influential on today’s Leftist Latin American leaders, from Patagonia to the Central American isthmus. 

Back then, Argentina’s Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, often clashed with his fellow Jesuits who took up Liberation Theology’s politicized call to confront Argentina’s violent military dictatorship in the 1970s.  But after taking the name Francis upon becoming Pope, he is now embracing Liberation Theology and its direction to the church to have a “preferential option for the poor.” 

The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, has been on a rehabilitation campaign of sorts, saying that with the first Latin American pope, liberation theology can no longer “remain in the shadows to which it has been relegated for some years, at least in Europe.”