Vatican watchdog eyes Spanish Jesuit

ely times
VATICAN CITY - The Vatican office that safeguards doctrinal correctness is examining a Spanish Jesuit who is a prominent champion of liberation theology, a Vatican official said Monday.

He said the congregation would report its conclusions soon, and this would lay out the case.

The Vatican has objected to liberation theology, citing its basis in Marxist analysis of society — particularly the idea of class struggle and the promotion of social, political and economic justice for the poor.

Before becoming pontiff two years ago, Pope Benedict XVI , as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger , led the congregation‘s crackdown on theologians the Vatican judged to be perilously straying from church doctrine.

Sobrino has been based in El Salvador for decades and was close to the Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, an insistent critic of human rights abuses in the country. The churchman was slain in 1980 while celebrating Mass.