vol. 10 núm. 1 (2019)

In 2018, the Latin America Church commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most important events in its history: the II General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate, held in Medellin, Colombia. The Faculty of Theology of the University of Santo Tomás, joining the many celebrations carried out throughout the continent, organized the First International Congress of Latin American and Caribbean Theology: "50 Years of Medellin: Church and Signs of the Times " In this issue, Albertus Magnus journal collects some of the articles that served as the basis for the various papers that were presented.

To desire and join efforts so that the Church is an effective and authentic sign and presence of the liberating love of God in the midst of humanity, is a mission and task that corresponds to all believers, who feel connected and identified with the community of faith and charity , that, gathered in the name of God, walks pilgrimage between lights, shadows, joys, sufferings and struggles towards the new heaven and the new earth. The present text makes an analysis around the understanding of the Church as a community of faith and love, which underlies the Document of the II General Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopate, held in Medellin (1968). There the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops sought precisely that the local ecclesial communities were the visible presence of a renewing movement for our Continent, giving special strength to the concept of "Local Church": a visible Church, poor at a spiritual and material level, which gives preference to the poor and excluded, a prophetic church and servant of the world, present in daily life and in the different situations of human beings, illuminating them with the Gospel and the light of Jesus Christ.

The Medellín Document, in this text, is assumed from the Philosophy of Liberation and its preferential option for the young and the poor. For this purpose, the writing is articulated from four variables or axes of work. In the first place, the contextualization of the II General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate is presented. In a second section, a reflective exercise is done on the preferential option for the poor. In a third axis, we reflect on the mission of education as liberating. Finally, the axis is worked on The philosophy of liberation as close to the preferential option for the poor.

With regard to the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Medellín Conference, we ask about the situation of women and the path that has been taken in theological reflection to contribute to the defense of her dignity and the achievement of her full participation in the society and in the church. The achievements and the pending roads are indicated.

This article seeks to establish the relationship between the Medellin Conference and feminist theology.Therefore, the first level of reflection seeks to make an evaluation of the symbolic equality and real inequality present in the final document on the subject. Later, it is explained to what extent Medellín became a foundational libertarian event. Then, the category option for the poor is retaken in all its richness, to finally make a critical approach to its implications. Lastly, the text proposes open horizons for feminist theology in today's society.

Hebrews develops a Christology around the figure of Jesus and a community that is firm in its Christian faith, despite the risks involved. It provides the title of “high priest” to Jesus, from a new genealogy, Melchizedek. The true priesthood faithful to the Christian message is capable of witnessing to the living God, assuming human reality and taking distant from the sacrificial and banal rituality (10, 1). The Document of Medellin (1968) has a vast recommendation to the priests of Latin America about their service in permanent mission. However, it has not been enough and today we have a church in crisis with its priestly vocations and with its parishioners. As a Christian and lay I propose to rethink the priesthood by relativizing some demands that are anachronistic and dreaming of a church that incarnates a discipleship of equals.

The article addresses the intrinsic relationship between salvation and liberation in the thought of the theologian Leonardo Boff. Any expert of Liberation Theology will know that it is not in characteristic of Boff to relate salvation with liberation but it is the proper characteristic of Latin American theology of liberation. We focus on one of the greatest exponents of this Latin American theological characteristic. Salivation as a theological theme can have infinite epistemological approaches. Therefore, while looking at salvation from the context of Latin American countries, a specific reflection will be produced for a particular audience, that is, a salvation that seeks the liberation of the poor. Theology and its reflection on the salvation should not remain in the abstract and speculative, but should have a social impact, clash with the political. “When today we speak of liberation, by that expression we mean a whole tendency and concrete incarnation of our faith” (Boff, 1987, p. 387).

This article describes the Faith and Displacement project in order to show how an evangelical institution seeks to mobilize the Church to respond to the signs of the times, especially in relation to forced displacement in Colombia, by means of fostering the integral evangelization and growth in faith of lay evangelicals, so that they become cocreators and coleaders in the mission of the Church. It describes the theoretical foundation of the project -a fusion between integral missiology and Participatory Action Research- and offers a summary of the project structure, emphasizing the pastoral-pedagogical intervention which the project has creatEd. Throughout the article, an account is given how this approach reflects various priorities of the Medellín conference.