Remembering Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, O.P., Pilgrim of Hope
01/31/2025
The existence of poverty represents a sundering both of solidarity among persons and also of communion with God. Poverty is an expression ... of a negation of love. It is therefore incompatible with the coming of the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom of love and justice. Poverty is an evil, a scandalous condition ... To eliminate it is to bring closer the moment of seeing God face to face, in union with other persons.
—Father Gustavo Gutierrez
In 2024, Pope Francis issued the bull of indiction “Spes non confundit,” proclaiming 2025 the Jubilee Year of Hope and encouraging all people to cultivate hope as a “constant companion” in their daily interactions and so become, literally and figuratively, “pilgrims of hope.” The bull urges people to be optimistic yet realistic about the world, to strive for patience and to demonstrate compassion, to transform the “signs of the times” into signs of hope and to forge “a social covenant to support and foster hope, one that is inclusive and not ideological.” Not surprisingly, Pope Francis casts that covenant in the rhetorical turn of Matthew 25: where there is war, we must endeavor to create peace; where there are prisoners, we should strive for forgiveness and restoration; where there are immigrants or refugees, we should offer welcome with open hearts; and where there is poverty, we should endeavor to ameliorate economic inequities in modern society.
The Pope’s message brought to mind Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, O.P., who died in October 2024. Fr. Gutierrez was indeed a “pilgrim of hope.” While it has been a facile distraction for some to denounce Gutierrez’s call for liberation of the poor and his impassioned witness to the moral hypocrisy of the Church (and many privileged Catholics) with the claim of theological censure, thus avoid his critique altogether. However, Pope Francis and several contemporary Catholic theologians do agree that his work was profoundly grounded in the teachings of Jesus Christ and concordant with Catholic doctrine. Gutierrez understood that to be poor was to suffer an accretion of humiliations and injustices: to be poor, as he wrote, “... means to die of hunger, to be illiterate, to be exploited by others, not to know that you are being exploited, not to know that you are a person.” He consistently reminded the Church about the inviolability of the dignity of every person, and how poverty is a moral offense against that dignity. He struggled to appraise honestly the history of the Church with regard to the poor (notably since the rise of modern capitalism in the West) and to call for a spiritual and moral renewal within the Church and among the privileged faithful. Sadly, the call is still relevant: according to the most current (2023) study by the World Bank, nearly half (47%) of the world’s population lives on less than $50 a week and of that group, about 8% live on less than $14 a week. The populations enduring the direst poverty are concentrated mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, regions of the fastest growing and largest Catholic populations worldwide.
Gutierrez persisted in hope. He anticipated that the global Church would remember itself as a living entity that must have a consequential presence in the actual lives of people, not just in its vaulted edifices but in homeless shelters and forsaken farms and border crossings and migrant refuges. He was mindful of the social risk of speaking truth to power, but also of his moral obligation. Many leaders of the Church seem too interested in remaining close to the dark halls of a brutal secular power, and a majority of Catholics (56%), with their vote in November, have stepped away from the teaching of universal human dignity and compassion for the poor. The teachings of Gutierrez remain a rebuke to such rampant hypocrisy. It is imperative for the Church to readjust its perspective and see Christ, as St. Teresa of Calcutta wrote, in the face of every person, especially the poor, the ailing and the stateless. Or, as Gutierrez explained,
Our encounter with the Lord occurs in our encounter with others, especially in the encounter with those whose human features have been disfigured by oppression, despoliation, and alienation and who have “no beauty, no majesty” but are the things “from which men turn away their eyes” (Isa. 53:2-3)
To look upon the anguish of modern society and to face it actively, sustained by faith, hope and great love, is to encounter the Lord. So we are called during these troubled times.
June-Ann Greeley is a medievalist and professor of Catholic studies, theology and religious studies at Sacred Heart University.