Enabling a New Perspective

Liberation theology would never have achieved a global reach without the intelligent work—always attentive to the signs of the times—of Robert Ellsberg and Orbis Books (“Publishing for a World Church,” October). He demonstrated that genuine, serious theology exists in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. This theology is characterized by having one foot in theological scholarship and the other in work with the poor and oppressed. We can attest to this: we did not go to bring God and the liberating Christ to them; rather, we found God and the liberating Christ already present in their lives of faith and struggle. Thanks to Robert Ellsberg, this perspective was quickly understood. Orbis Books served as the vehicle to share this way of doing theology—rooted in the world of the poor—with the wider world. His work as a writer and editor influenced North American theology, prompting it to begin reflecting on social issues from a theological perspective as well. For this reason, we are immensely grateful for the many years of dedicated work by our companion in life and in struggle: Robert Ellsberg.

Leonardo Boff
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Widening the Reach

I first read A Theology of Liberation thirty years after it was published. It changed my life. At the time, I was making documentary films on global poverty and struggling to understand the suffering I had filmed in the massive slums of Kenya, Uganda, Brazil, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines, and Haiti, where I now operate a home for abandoned and abused children in Port-au-Prince.

I showed one of my films—Endless Exodus, which documented the plight of undocumented migrants crossing into America—on the campus of the University of Notre Dame, where I had the distinct privilege of meeting Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez. He translated one of my films (Holy Pictures) into Portuguese and was able to get it aired on a TV station in Peru. Orbis Books published two of my books, and in the process, I came to deeply admire Robert Ellsberg. I am grateful that Commonweal published Ellsberg’s detailed and informative story of Orbis and his life as its publisher.

Gerard Thomas Straub
Vero Beach, Fla.