French priests in Latin America in the mid-1980s

Abstract

Since its foundation in 1962, the Comité épiscopal France - Amérique Latine (CEFAL) has served as an institutional relay to provide Fidei donum diocesan priests to Latin American bishops who requested them, in order to compensate for a religious supervision considered insufficient. In 1984, the Committee's management sent a questionnaire to the 110 or so priests working on the continent, with the aim of taking stock and identifying what had been "experienced and discovered".

The 28 written responses that have been preserved offer an unpublished and highly revealing panorama of the theological and political choices of French priestly personnel in Latin America at the time of the publication of Cardinal Ratzinger's Instruction Libertatis nuntius. This abundant documentation testifies to a strong permeation of representations and practices linked to "liberation christianity" (Michael Löwy): fascination with the basic ecclesial communities, the centrality of the poor as actors in history, a new interest in Afro-Brazilian and Amerindian populations, the rediscovery of the Bible, support for militant work.

However, this leftist sensibility is far from unequivocal and some of the responses, although a minority, are clearly different from the dominant progressive and liberationist orientation.