Pope Leo XIV’s election marks a ancient second: the primary pope from an English-speaking nation, and the primary from the US. Much more important than those “firsts,” I imagine, is a “second”: Leo follows in Pope Francis’ footsteps as a clergyman formed by means of the Latin American church.
The brand new pontiff served the church in Peru all the way through the overdue Nineteen Eighties and ‘90s. Francis known as him again to serve from 2015-2023 as bishop of the northern town of Chiclayo – the place Catholics these days are rejoicing over the election of one in every of their very own, “un papa Chiclayano.”
As a Catholic theologian, I imagine the School of Cardinals’ choice to elect any other pontiff with such sturdy ties to Latin The united states reaffirms the continent’s affect at the world church’s sense of project: to be a church that defends the marginalized and stands in cohesion with the oppressed.
This imaginative and prescient is embodied by means of the continent’s many Catholics who’ve given their lives for talking out towards repression, violence and poverty over the last 50 years – maximum famously St. Oscar Romero, whom Francis beatified in Would possibly 2015.
Having studied Latin American martyrdom intently, I’d argue that Francis’ preach used to be a minimum of partly encouraged by means of those martyrs’ instance, cast in blood. His choice to formally acknowledge this type of martyrdom provides to the legacy that many Latin American Catholics are hoping Leo will proceed.
‘Church of the poor’
The 2d Vatican Council, a sequence of conferences of bishops from all over the world that happened between 1962-65, led to quite a lot of reforms within the Catholic church, together with larger center of attention at the deficient and susceptible. Right through the council, a gaggle of bishops accrued within the Catacombs of Saint Domitilla to signal a pact by which they dedicated themselves to renouncing wealth and privilege and turning into a “church of the poor.”
Many of those bishops had been from Latin The united states, and in 1968, the Latin American Bishops’ Convention met to put in force the council’s reforms. The paperwork that emerged from this assembly in Medellín, Colombia, inspired closeness to other folks residing in poverty and positioned the promotion of justice and peace on the center of the church’s evangelizing project. Specifically, they emphasised the church’s name to assist release the oppressed from unjust social constructions that produce poverty and violence.
Pope Francis, then a cardinal, kisses a person’s foot all through a Mass with early life attempting to conquer drug addictions in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2008.
AP Photograph
Now not all Latin American bishops embraced this imaginative and prescient of the church’s project. However many took the decision to cohesion very severely, denouncing financial injustices and human rights violations. Those bishops and different socially dedicated Christians promoted reasons like land reform, agricultural cooperatives, employees’ rights and get entry to to well being care and schooling.
On the time, many Latin American nations had been marked by means of huge inequalities, army dictatorships and violent political repression. Those regimes, a lot of that have been subsidized by means of the US, continuously classified any opposition as “communist” and a danger to nationwide safety.
Some Latin American bishops – along side many clergymen, nuns and laypeople – paid for his or her faith-inspired commitments to justice and peace with their lives. 1000’s of Christians had been assassinated all through the overdue twentieth century as a result of they stood up for the rights of the deficient, or they spoke out towards oligarchs for hoarding wealth, land and gear. Others had been centered after denouncing army regimes for massacring, torturing and “disappearing” civilians.
Inside of some sectors of Latin American Catholicism, those men and women are remembered as “martyrs”: individuals who, like Jesus of Nazareth, gave their lives for following what they noticed as God’s mandate to talk the reality and observe compassion, justice and peace.
Pope’s popularity
Right through Francis’ preach, he formally known a number of of those Christians as martyrs, transferring their purpose for sainthood towards beatification and canonization. Beatification formally announces an individual to be “blessed” and permits them to be commemorated in the neighborhood, whilst canonization makes them a complete saint for the worldwide church.
Scholars hang up artwork depicting slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero as they stroll to the chapel in San Salvador the place he used to be shot and killed.
AP Photograph/Salvador Melendez
As an example, Bishop Enrique Ángel Angelelli used to be assassinated in 1976 for his cohesion with the deficient and protection of employees’ rights all through Argentina’s Grimy Struggle – a violent marketing campaign of state terrorism towards critics of the army junta. Francis declared him a martyr in 2018. The next 12 months, Angelelli used to be beatified, along side two clergymen and a lay chief from the similar province who had been all in a similar fashion martyred simply weeks earlier than.
Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero used to be similarly dedicated to protecting the deficient of El Salvador all through the years of armed struggle main as much as the Salvadoran Civil Struggle. In his Sunday homilies, he named individuals who have been imprisoned, tortured and disappeared by means of army and paramilitary forces, and drew at the Gospel and church educating to problem the violence and oppression of the day.
His promotion of human rights and his call for that the army “stop the repression” resulted in his assassination whilst celebrating Mass on March 24, 1980. Francis declared Romero a martyr and beatified him in 2015, then canonized him in 2018.
Pope Francis perspectives a picture of Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero all through a non-public target audience on the Vatican in 2015.
L’Osservatore Romano/Pool Photograph by the use of AP
Those movements positioned a stamp of approval on how leaders like Angelelli and Romero embodied the church’s project in their very own time and position. However Francis’ popularity additionally made a broader observation about how the church will have to relate to the “powers and principalities” of the sector. During his papacy, Francis endured those martyrs’ dedication by means of status with other folks at the “peripheries”: washing the ft of prisoners, protecting the rights of migrants and important handle the Earth.
Martyrs of the Earth
Within the twenty first century, handle the Earth is generating a complete new era of martyrs like Angelelli and Romero. Land and environmental defenders in Latin The united states and all over the world are being assassinated for his or her paintings to mitigate hurt from industries like fossil gas extraction, mining, logging, ranching and extra.
In September 2024, Francis signaled his consciousness of this phenomenon when he lamented the homicide of Juan Antonio López. López used to be a lay Catholic chief in Honduras whose religion encouraged him to protect native communities, lands and rivers from open-pit iron oxide mining.
The Latin American bishops’ convention has taken be aware of this resurgence in violent persecution. In December 2024, it introduced a marketing campaign known as “Life is hanging on by a thread,” selling cohesion with the paintings of ecological and human rights defenders like López.
As a former vice chairman of the Peruvian bishops’ convention, Pope Leo XIV is most probably conscious about this marketing campaign and the violence that it hopes to disarm.
The brand new pope had an in depth courting with Francis, whose legacy looms massive. A key inspiration for that legacy, then again, is the witness of Latin American Christians whose blood has been shed for justice, peace and the surroundings.
Simplest time will inform if this new pontiff’s management continues their indomitable cohesion with other folks whom, in Francis’ phrases, this international has deemed to be “disposable.”
