In the 1960s, at a time when right-wing military dictatorships were usurping populist governments in Latin America and the radical left was insisting Third World poverty resulted from exploitation by the West, a new school of thought calling for the church to play a direct role in effecting social and political change for the benefit of the poor and working classes was taking shape throughout the Americas, particularly in South America's Catholic churches.

The movement, encouraged by the liberal atmosphere created in part by the Second Vatican Council and the Second Latin American Bishops Conference, which spoke of the church "listening to the cry of the poor and becoming the interpreter of their anguish," received its name in 1971, when Peruvian priest and theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez published the seminal text, "A Theology of Liberation."

Liberation theology, which says the Gospels demand "a preferential option for the poor," spread rapidly in the 1980s. But the late Pope, John Paul II, with the help of Joseph Ratzinger, who was then a Cardinal and the Church's Defender of the Doctrine of the Faith, sought to curb its influence on grounds that it conflated Catholicism and Marxism, and in so doing narrowed the scope of the Church from heavenly salvation to earthly class struggle and social justice and focused on Jesus as a revolutionary rather than the Son of God.

In the mid-80s, the Vatican silenced liberation theorists, notably Brazil's leading proponent, Leonardo Boff, prohibiting him from publishing, lecturing or editing theological journals. Still, the movement persists, with some 80,000 communities active in Brazil alone.