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Liberation theology shaped Maryknoll Father Stephen Judd’s over four decades of ministry in Latin America.

Maryknoll Father Stephen Judd describes an early encounter that shaped his mission life. As a young seminarian, in 1973, he and other Maryknollers were visited in Arequipa, Peru, by Father Gustavo Gutiérrez. “He touched on the essential elements of doing theology in a different way,” recalls Father Judd. This meeting with the founder of liberation theology “was the best orientation to mission.”

Born in 1945 in Butte, Montana, Judd was raised in a mining community composed of people from diverse backgrounds looking for work. He comes from a family of Italian immigrants who established a small business, Charley’s New Deal Bar. Learning from his parents to welcome all kinds of people — “saloon ministry” — formed him for mission, Father Judd says. He later remarked that a priest convenes people of different backgrounds for a single purpose.

Judd studied Spanish at the University of Montana and earned a master’s degree in Spanish literature at the University of New Mexico. He then joined the Air Force. While stationed in Cape Cod, he came across Maryknoll flyers in the military base chapel. Judd soon got in touch with Father Shea, then vocations director in Boston.

Father Judd recalls as if it were yesterday his arrival at the Maryknoll Seminary in New York. Bags still unpacked, he sat down for breakfast at the table with a priest who ministered in Peru. At the end of the meal, the priest invited him to visit. “At that very moment,” Father Judd says, “I felt called to serve there.” It was on the resulting trip that he met the renowned Dominican priest and Peruvian philosopher, Father Gutiérrez.

Just after his ordination in 1978, Father Judd gives his first blessing as a priest to his parents, Esther and Charley Judd, who had come to attend the ceremony at the Maryknoll seminary in Ossining, New York. (Maryknoll Mission Archives/U.S.)

Ordained five years later, in 1978, Father Judd’s first assignment was to Peru.

Liberation theology became an essential lens for him in mission. “I had an experience with this new current of theological reflection as a methodology,” Father Judd says, “to respond to my concerns regarding the signs of the times — through the eyes of my faith.”   

Father Judd returned to the U.S. to complete a doctorate at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Through his studies, he reflected on his experience of serving the poor in Peru. He became absorbed in the writing of Father Gutiérrez and Latin American liberation theology. “This theology did not have as its starting point doctrinal dogmatic questions,” he explains, “but rather the faith experience of poor people in Latin America in their search for meaning.”

The core of liberation theology is found in the mission of Jesus, Father Judd explains, citing the Biblical verse, “He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free” (Luke 4:18).

The Christian mission is oriented towards the integral liberation of each person from sin, but it extends to the human family — and God’s creation — through global solidarity and a life of witness to the joy of this good news.

Father Gustavo Gutiérrez, founder of liberation theology, shares his knowledge during a seminar held at the Fathers and Brothers center in Ossining, New York, on Dec. 12, 1984. (C. Martin/Maryknoll Mission Archives/U.S.)

The point of departure is the collective life of faith — especially of the people “crucified” in the world today. The sixteenth-century missionary Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas “spoke of ‘crucified peoples who die before their time of an early and unjust death,’” Father Judd says.

For Father Judd, this has meant walking with Indigenous people, notably in Peru for 26 years and in Bolivia for 16 years. “I have been guided by the profound pastoral experience among the Andean peoples (Aymara and Quechua) in Peru and Bolivia, the Maya in Guatemala and Mexico, the Mapuche in Chile and the Patagonia of Argentina, the Krahô tribe in Brazil and most recently among the Lakota people here in the U.S.,” he says.

“I have been formed and nourished through learning about their cosmovisions, rich in symbolic worldview,” Father Judd continues. “I have been evangelized by them throughout my missionary journey.”

In this journey, he follows in Maryknoll’s footsteps in Latin America. Arriving first in Bolivia in 1942, Maryknoll missioners served marginalized, primarily Indigenous communities. They learned to approach the people “with an appreciation for their original cultures in dialogue with our shared Christian faith,” he says. “Our pastoral practices were created with respect, without impositions.”

These perspectives influenced the development of Maryknoll’s mission theology. “They instilled in us a sensitivity to listen to new voices,” he says, and “allowed us to cultivate an openness to new theological expressions and to learn from the social sciences.”

During his mission service in Peru, young Father Judd, shown here in 1986, accompanies and visits campesino communities in the region of Puno. (James J. Hengy/Maryknoll Mision Archives/Peru)

Working with local churches and communities throughout Latin America, early efforts led to rural development projects, the Institute for Rural Education and a radiocommunications school.

Serving in the southern Andes of Peru, Father Judd witnessed “the struggles of Indigenous peoples who were denied a claim to their ancestral lands, which had unjustly been placed in the hands of large landowners.”

He also witnessed the way that native Andean language, symbols and rituals were incorporated into pilgrimages and liturgical celebrations, giving the people hope and strength in their struggles. The local church even supported massive nonviolent marches and other campaigns.

An approach to theology that challenges power structures and systems of oppression is not without critics and opponents. Some claimed that Gutiérrez and other liberation theologians overly politicized the Gospel. But the Church was catapulted into the modern world not by liberation theology, but by the Second Vatican Council.

Maryknoll Father Stephen Judd, then director of campus ministry at a university in Puno, Peru, addresses the schoolchildren of San José of Huaraya during an outdoor liturgical celebration. (Victor Maqqué/Maryknoll Mission Archives/Perú)

In the second conference in Medellín, Colombia, in 1968, the Latin American bishops took this challenge to heart. They began to respond to unjust social structures and embraced the concept of a “preferential option for the poor.” “There, in Medellín, theologians like Gustavo Gutiérrez shared their reflections which were in tune with what became the seeds of the new liberation theology,” Father Judd says.

There was a litany of martyrs.

In Bolivia, the Jesuit priest Luis Espinal was martyred on March 21, 1980. Three days afterward, Saint Oscar Romero was killed in El Salvador. Similar struggles were taking place in other parts of Latin America.

For Maryknoll, the impact of liberation theology has been substantial.

In the States, Orbis Books (the publishing house of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers) was founded in 1970. According to its website, the mission of Orbis was initially “to amplify theological voices from the Global South — or as it was then called, the ‘Third World.’” The English translation and publication of Gutiérrez’s A Theology of Liberation was a foundational event. Last year, a celebration marked the 50th anniversary of this book which transformed the Church.

In 2003, Father Judd poses with teachers of the Maryknoll Language Institute of the Maryknoll Mission Center in Latin America in Cochabamba, Bolivia. (J. Francis Delfin/Maryknoll Mission Archives/Bolivia)

Father Judd now serves as director of Maryknoll’s Mission Formation Program, promoting a culture of mission in the U.S. through developing resources, formation programs and mission immersion trips. 

He notes that the Church has become more attuned to the ecological crisis the planet is facing. This, too, is a current of liberation theology, he says. Citing Pope Francis’ encyclicals Laudato Si’ and Laudate Deum, he adds, “While we listen to the cry of the poor, we must listen to the cry of the Earth.”

Liberation theology will continue to enrich the Church as long as people still strive for liberation in light of the Gospel’s promises. It has left its mark on Maryknoll, and on Father Steve Judd.

Featured image: At a Maryknoll gathering in Chile, Maryknoll Father Stephen Judd holds up the “cross of life.” Studded with locally produced seeds, grains and fruits, it symbolizes God’s love for creation. (Paul Sykora/Maryknoll Mission Archives/Chile)