This week in Christian history: Spanish Jesuits in Va., Christian and Missionary Alliance founder ordained, justice statement

Latin American Bishops’ justice statement — September 6, 1968

This week marks the anniversary of when Roman Catholic Bishops gathering in Medellín, Colombia, issued a statement calling on the Church to tackle justice and economic issues.

Known as the Second General Conference of Latin American Bishops, the gathering came in response to Second Vatican Council, which stressed more involvement in the community.

The statement they released focused on the topics of justice, poverty, and peace, noting that at that point, most of the Latin American Catholic Church was impoverished.

“The Christian quest for justice is a demand arising from biblical teaching. All people are merely humble stewards of material goods. In the search for salvation we must avoid the dualism which separates temporal tasks from the work of sanctification,” read the statement.

“We have faith that our love for Christ and our brothers and sisters will not only be the great force liberating us from injustice and oppression, but also the inspiration for social justice, understood as a whole of life and as an impulse toward the integral growth of our countries.”

Hosffman Ospino and Rafael Luciani of the Jesuit publication America Magazine argued that the statement “revolutionized pastoral and theological reflection in Latin America.”

“The conversations leading to it, the meeting itself and its conclusions set the tone, language and method for how Latin American Catholics and many other Catholics throughout the world would reflect on evangelization during the next half century,” they wrote in 2018.