The clamor of the poor

“I have a complex relationship to Catholicism, which I moved away in adulthood,” said François-Xavier Drouet. So, when in 2018 he looks at the history of liberation theology, this theological current born in the late 1960s in the wake of Vatican Council II, the filmmaker was immediately captivated. “The idea that religion could rhyme with emancipation represented for me a cognitive dissonance. »»

He who is living today a small village in the Plateau de Millevaches, in Limousin, has done his political education through the study of the Zapatistian movement in Mexico in the 1980s. He knows very well the history of the revolutionary currents of Latin America. “Over my readings, I scrupulously noted the names of the Christians engaged in this movement which were still alive. For two years, I traveled Nicaragua, Salvador, Mexico and Brazil to meet them. Through the testimonies of laity and religious collected, the spectator is immersed in the life of these Christians who took the party of the poor and the oppressed to promote their emancipation. “I wanted their experiences to lead the spectator to wonder about his own relationship to faith,” said the filmmaker.

Communicate

Vivifiers, these testimonies are woven with archive images showing with what violence the theology of the liberation was fighting. From his election in the United States, Ronald Reagan fights against this movement which he perceives as a Marxist infiltration within the Church. John Paul II also opposed it firmly. Images from 1983 show the Holy Father Hue by the crowd, during a mass in Managua, in Nicaragua. We are in the middle of the Cold War. The dictatorships of Latin America establish a plan to destroy the influence of this thought and persecute its representatives. More than 200 members of the clergy are killed, as well as thousands of laity. “The theology of the Liberation is not dead, it was murdered,” analyzes a Nicaraguan Christian very involved at the time.

“The lead screed will be lifted much later by Pope Francis, who will make gestures of appeasement towards certain figures of the movement such as the Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff”, comments François-Xavier Drouet. If all these witnesses consider themselves today as vanquished, they have not given up. You only have to observe Father Gonzalez and Sister Palencia who, in Mexico, continue to defend the rights of the natives and to welcome migrants: “If we do not communicate hope, we help things collapse,” says the nun, always ready to fight injustice.