Catholicism and the Building of Latin American Culture: the Reflections of Alberto Methol Ferré

In this paper, we present the special relationship between Catholicism and Latin American history, as seen by a Latin American thinker, Alberto Methol Ferré (Uruguay, 1919–2009). It is difficult to classify Alberto Methol Ferré within a specific discipline, due to the variety of the issues that he addressed: from Theology to Philosophy, from History to Politics and Geopolitics. Closely connected to his own time, he was fully engaged with the challenging features of the century he lived in. In this article, we shall first look into Methol Ferre's intellectual sources and examine his ideas on God and on people, in particular Latin American people. We shall then explore his theological interpretation of Latin American history and sketch a perspective of the relationship between the Catholic Church and Latin America, as he perceived it.