Karl Marx in a Cassock? Liberation Theology in Brazil in the 1980s

Starting from considerations on Catholic aggiornamento and the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, this study reflects on disputes between progressive and conservative forces within the Catholic Church and analyzes the movement of political and religious ideas in Brazil during the 1980s. Based on a bibliographic review centered on the debates between the Holy Office and Liberation Theology after the publication of Leonardo Boff’s Church: Charism and Power, the article reconstructs the historical context of Vatican II and examines the advances, contradictions, and continuities of the debate on the social question in Brazilian society. It argues that the Catholic Church’s growing concern with social issues intensified conflicts that generated new conceptions of faith and social action in Brazilian Catholicism.