Category: Liberating spirituality

Candido Portinari | UN War and Peace | Oil on wood panel | Brazil 1957

From the end of times to the time of the end On the collapse of modern certainties and the sprouts of life amidst the rubble

By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez

The 81st UN General Assembly, which began last Tuesday in New York, has shown that the ship built by the world's governments after the collective trauma of World War II is adrift. Trump's cynicism in addressing the leaders of the international community with the arrogance of a declining emperor, threatening Iran with total destruction, and speaking of the American continent as if it were his own territory, foreshadows nothing but a delirious wave of military, financial, and media violence on a global scale. We also witnessed the perverse spectacle offered by Benjamin Netanyahu, amidst protests from many delegations who walked out of the main hall as an act of repudiation while the Israeli prime minister attempted to speak. This demonic figure, accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court, addressed himself and his henchmen to justify the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, sustained by the complicity of companies in the military and digital warfare industries that now treat the world as their spoils.

The voices of presidents who maintain a living sense of international law—such as those of Brazil, Jordan, Qatar, Turkey, and France, with the suspicious and unfortunate absence of the Mexican president—revealed the decline of this international forum, incapable of upholding the commitments of modern international law. This ethical and political ideal laid its foundations at the beginning of modern colonialism, with the cry of the Dominican friar Antón de Montesinos in 1511 on the island of Ayiti, named La Española by the colonizers: “Are these not men?” referring to the conquered indigenous peoples. This outcry was later promoted by the School of Salamanca as the Law of Nations, a precursor to modern international law, through the thinking of another Dominican, Friar Francisco de Vitoria, and other professors at the University of Salamanca.

But what has happened to cause humanity's modern attempts to collapse? Several voices in investigative journalism and the economic and social sciences attribute the current civilizational crisis to the devastating power of modern industrial capitalism, later transformed into financial capitalism and now disguised as digital extractive capitalism, which, with the global war industry and the unprecedented apparatus of Artificial Intelligence, already controls the entire world. Other voices in the humanities attribute the cause to the colonial model undertaken by the West from the end of the 15th century as an expansionist enterprise of settlements, controlling lands, knowledge, and "souls," as the Afro-Brazilian theologian Silvia Regina de Lima Silba puts it, by the modern conquering subject who acted according to the maxim of colonial politics: "conquiro ergo sum" or "I conquer, therefore I am," which Enrique Dussel proposed as an axiom of modern coloniality.

From our perspective, without denying all the factors that have produced the civilizational crisis we face today, following the thread gleaned by Ivan Illich in the tangle of machine society—unraveled in the Mexican context by Jean Robert, Sylvia Marcos, and Gustavo Esteva—there is a fundamental cause of the crisis that we can call “spiritual,” as Javier Sicilia emphasizes in his writings, following Illich the theologian. It is a matter of understanding the global crisis as a “crisis of theological meaning” because modern societies, including religions and Christian churches, have lost sight of the incarnation of the divine Word as the source of humanity, that is, of closeness to human beings and to the creatures of the cosmos. “From the corruption of the best, the worst was born,” according to the medieval maxim taken up by Illich.

Indeed, technoscientific modernity created mechanisms of governance to control subjectivities and populations, transforming us into subsystems of a larger system: the welfare state. This system, with its tools such as schools, hospitals, prisons, and religion, subjugates peoples for the sake of the power of extractive control elites. Therefore, "proximity" to others became subordinated to vicarious powers, to which we all delegated charity as the supreme act of human virtue to mediating institutions like sacrificial religion and the welfare state.

It is therefore important to remember here that the return to the “mystical” or spiritual refuge of the individual and of peoples – with its expressions of historical strength that animates the victims and as the power of the poor and excluded who rebel against systemic violence – is the only ethical and political compass we have as humanity in this time of global uncertainty.

The collapse of the modern international system is giving way to global barbarism, with the unprecedented power of the “warlord” elites, as Pope Leo XIV called them, who govern the world. The Silicon Valley magnates, funding the greedy governments of the North and South—as Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor detail in their recent book, “End-Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World,” which we discussed in the previous post—will continue buying territories, devastating ecosystems, corrupting governments, and eliminating peoples who resist the genocides and ecocides perpetrated by their complicit governments for the benefit of the digital military industry.

But the resistance in the cracks of those walls—the resistance that preserves, reinvents, and creates other ways of life in every liberated body, inhabited place, and autonomous territory—is what will keep us standing as humanity. In these experiences of other ways of life beats “the time of the end,” that is, the spark of life that confronts death and connects us to the source of Life. In the midst of the “end times” imposed by today’s powerful, people and communities in re-existence sow life like seeds of messianic time, in which the new world come from God beats.

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In the coming days, in Arequipa, Peru, thanks to the hospitality of Belissa and her community in resistance, we will share seeds of those other worlds born from mutual spiritual and theological accompaniment. This is the journey that, for the past eleven years, a group of us who find ourselves at the crossroads of spirituality and social activism have undertaken, drawing nourishment from the power of the Ruah that animates diverse rebellions against necropower, and that illuminates the combative hope of those who say “no more” to the logic of death, beginning to live, in the here and now, “the end times.”.

Lima, September 26, 2026

September 26, 2026
Paulo Medina | Cosmos | Chihuahua, 2020

Mutual accompaniment as a path of decolonial spirituality Explorations from the "here and now" of religion

By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez

The spring that nourishes the valley of re-existences is, without a doubt, spirituality or that inner strength that arises from shared vulnerability to resist and re-exist.

When a victim of any kind of violence simply freezes, licking their wounds, they risk becoming trapped in their pain, with little chance of healing the trauma and loss, and without the possibility of grieving. But when they allow themselves to be touched by the wounds of another person or group, they begin to realize that their pain and anger connect them to others. And from there, paradoxically, emerges a power to discover themselves, alongside others, no longer isolated, but capable of confronting the trauma and creating new ways of life that will allow them to exist again.

That is why the Searching Mothers in Mexico represent an ethical, political, and spiritual compass in this uncertain time for the world, helping us keep hope alive. Mutual care emerges here as a way of inhabiting, with others, the cracks in the narratives imposed by the oppressors, whether they be mafiosos or well-meaning people who wield toxic power that stifles life. It is about, day by day, experiencing in solitude the pain that no one can truly feel except in their own flesh, but with hope when one opens oneself to the pain of other people and families, while simultaneously exploring new territories to inhabit with "others," against the grain of the hegemonic narrative, wherever we may find ourselves.

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I discovered this wellspring of spirituality through mutual accompaniment with my Peruvian friend Juan Carlos La Puente more than twenty years ago in Santiago, Chile, during a period of community study with lay people, friars and sisters of the Dominican family, students, and advisors, sharing a roof, food, prayer, and leisure time together. We sought to go beyond the traditional frameworks of spirituality, especially in the case of Christianity and the centuries-old religious orders that had given way to a vertical style of “spiritual authority,” with a certain modern Jesuit influence, leading to the exercise of control over people's lives and consciences. Due to family tradition and as a young friar, I never had that experience, but my friend did, which allowed him to realize that this path was not the one that helped him flow in the life of the Divine Spirit. Juan Carlos longed to explore, like a condor of his land, that flapping that teaches us to "be moved and let ourselves be moved," as he recounts in the book "Mutual accompaniment in the divine Ruah" that we published together, during the Covid19 pandemic, in 2022.

A few years earlier, in 2016, we had the opportunity to drink from the same well in San Juan, Puerto Rico, along with two young Lutheran pastors, Melisa and Ron, who, with the support of David, their bishop in Portland, Oregon, were seeking to connect their Protestant spirituality of "sola fides" or "faith alone saves"—which had borne so much fruit over recent centuries—with the liberation and decolonial theologies emerging in the Global South. Months after that encounter, we met in a cabin in Oregon, the Green State of the United States, a group of about fifteen people, mostly young Lutheran pastors like Tayler, Lauren (now a bishop), Erika, and others, along with Saúl, Héctor, and me—three Mexicans who were then, though unknowingly, walking from our own vulnerability—David, a Lutheran bishop, and a "wounded Catholic," as Juan Carlos already described himself at that time. In Portland, he collaborated with migrant collectives, homeless people, and Latinx artists who, through their aesthetic work, accompanied the paths of dignity for these people and communities in resistance.

Thus, we began exploring a path of “mutual spiritual and theological accompaniment” that, since then, has brought together sixty or more people each year, eager to explore this “alternative” path of embodied and diverse spirituality, often outside the religious institutions that arose from this search but which, over time, became lost in the minutiae of controlling bodies and minds, and “hijacked spirituality,” as Carmenmargarita Sánchez de León likes to say, in the straitjacket of a belief system. We thus discovered the power of decolonial spirituality that emerges on the margins of the hegemonic system. This mutual accompaniment takes place through virtual and in-person meetings: five monthly online sessions, where we begin with personal accounts of our own vulnerability, precisely where we learn to “awaken,” with intuitions of life, dignity, rebellion, and resistance. We read each other's stories to find common threads and differences, which intertwine into a multicolored tapestry that adorns the table in our little house. There, a chef helps us cook together these shared narratives, built with words, symbols, and rituals that each of us creates, sometimes in the intimacy of our own homes, and sometimes together. At the end of each year, we gather for a virtual retreat "in the cloud," where we share with friends from other little houses the beautiful plants and delicious fruits we have sown and harvested "together." To conclude the year, those who are able to meet in person travel to a territory where a fellow member lives with their community of belonging and resistance. There, we celebrate our liberating intuitions, sharing the paths that have led us there, and celebrating in community with symbols and rituals what we see the Ruah (Spirit) moving us to experience.

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This experience of more than a decade of exploration gives us clues in diverse contexts - from the working-class neighborhoods of Arequipa and Nairobi, between lands of resistance in Catalonia and Chiapas, through homes of re-existence in Kerala and Portland, connecting artists with social activists, Lutheran pastors and Roman Catholic laypeople or freethinkers, all seeking inner life beyond religions - where we cultivate mutual support to give each other strength on the exciting path of re-existing amidst the growing violence of this world.

There, the other stream that feeds the valley of resistance and re-existence is born. The Resiste and Re-existe gatherings, which also emerged more than a decade ago at the Universidad Iberoamericana, where I spent twenty years, were inspired by the vision of figures like Gustavo Esteva, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, David Fernández, and Pablo Reyna. This path was illuminated by the proven wisdom of Raúl Zibechi, Rita Segato, Aída Hernández, Lorena Cabnal, Daniela Rea, and so many other "wise" individuals, situated in the cracks of global and local necropower, to tell and think about "other possible worlds | where many worlds fit," as we connect the dreams of the World Social Forum and the Zapatista movement in the mountains and jungles of southeastern Mexico.

But it must be said that the “collective awakening” came, with the force of a tide of life, from the social movements that envision and work, day after day, on the “change of world” that we all long for.

But that's another story that awaits us next week.

San Cristóbal de Las Casas, September 6, 2026

September 6, 2026
Coast | The Hour of the Peoples | Jobel, 2025

Back to our roots in times of devastation About witnesses from other worlds

By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez

A few months ago, we mourned the passing of Diego Irrazábal, a Chilean theologian who dedicated a significant part of his adult life to accompanying Andean indigenous peoples and grassroots communities in "Our America," as the youth of Bendita Mezcla (Blessed Mix) often refer to our continent. Our dear friend Fran Bosch wrote a memorable farewell to Diego in Ameridia from Mar del Plata, recalling his legacy of smiles and warmth as spiritual and theological spaces where we can celebrate the God of Life. Such was the precious gift of this missionary theologian to so many people and communities throughout his life.

I met Diego on the editorial board of the journal Concilium a decade ago, where we briefly coincided in a passing of the torch between Latin American colleagues of both older and newer generations. In that space, we shared the desire to update the vision and mission of an international journal that had been able to read “the signs of the times” in the spirit of the Good Pope, John XXIII, opening new perspectives for Christian theology during the difficult times of the Cold War and the utopian ideals of social change of the 1960s and 70s that were spreading throughout Latin America and other continents.

But the theoretical framework for Catholic theology of those years could not remain the same sixty years later in order to account for the decolonial turn that all theology—not only Christian but also Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and all religious and spiritual traditions—is called to undertake in order to discern the complicity of coloniality that appropriated our religious practices and theological discourses, where the paths of resistance and liberation take on bold and new forms. We were able to make some progress in this new understanding of theology in times of global devastation and the re-existence of people and communities with combative hope, but the processes and work of critical reflection that can emerge in these new theological spaces in times of systemic violence that is rapidly taking over the world remain pending.

Remembering Diego these days at the World Forum for Theology and Liberation (WFTL) held in Cotonou, Benin, Luiz Carlos Suzin - a Brazilian colleague from the generation that founded this theological process to accompany the social movements of the Global South - recalled with gratitude the vision of the Chilean colleague, from long ago, to admire the soul of the peoples in their ancestral religions and their diverse ways of coexisting with the colonial Christianity that marked the first evangelization of America, exploring new ways of dialogue of spiritual knowledge.

I met Diego again at some colloquiums in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Santiago, Chile. He was always a curious man, passionate about knowing how to forge connections with new generations, without losing the impetus of a prophetic and liberating Christianity that could not renounce its spiritual and theological DNA in order to always stand with the poor and the dispossessed of the earth.

Participating these days in the World Forum on Theology and Liberation, I see its influence also in this process of accompanying social movements that cultivate, in each territory, the world change we yearn for, and that build diverse collectives from the margins of the hegemonic world. Ultimately, we seek to build the “other possible world” of the World Social Forum, one “where many worlds fit,” as the Zapatista communities propose today.

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In its current edition, uncertainty gripped the participants in the World Social Forum upon receiving the unexpected news that it would be postponed, partly due to the difficult relationship with the Beninese government, as well as the political instability of the West African region in an international context aseptic to social internationalism, and some confusion on the part of the organizing committee in following the process that followed the forum held in 2024 in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Faced with this situation, the international delegation invited to the World Forum on Theology and Liberation was called to a last-minute assembly to decide how to host the two panels that the FMTL had offered to the World Social Forum: one on feminisms as theological voices of change and innovation confronting patriarchy, and the other on the resistance of peoples to the devastation of Mother Earth. An intense day allowed us to hear voices from social movements that are a sign of hope, such as the Ecolojah initiative with its Center for the Valorization of Agroecology, Sciences, and Endogenous Techniques (Cevaste), opened by Père Jah and Mère Jah in the interior of Benin, where it is possible to explore the connections between caring for the land and the spiritualities of the God of life.

In order to keep alive “the spirit of Porto Alegre” that gave birth to the World Social Forum, Silvia Regina de Lima Silva, Nicolas Panotto, and I proposed to the coordination team a day of work as the international delegation of the FMTL to creatively reflect together on the current challenges of liberation theology in a context of escalating global violence. We reformulated the traditional see-think-act steps of liberation theology with a decolonial emphasis, to make visible, problematize, and articulate our political, epistemic, and spiritual options where today we weave theology with social movements. It was a rich and intense day of reflection, accompanied by symbols of resistance and re-existence where we see glimpses of the Kingdom of God emerging in our present time.

We finally decided to spend a day at the World Social Forum to explore its current edition in an African country. The difficult negotiations between the organizing committee and the government, as well as the limited time for many international delegations to reach the event, raised doubts about the future of this space for autonomous social movements that share the vision of another possible world that gave rise to the WSF. The relevance of this model, now twenty-five years old and facing a crisis of internationalism and alter-globalization in times of global technofascism, will have to be evaluated.

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Today, August 8th, is the feast of Dominic of Guzman who—along with Diego de Osma, a bishop troubled by the uncertainty of his time in 13th-century Castile, a group of women from Prouille in southern France seeking to return to the roots of the Gospel in community, poverty, and prayer, and Peter Ceyla, a layman from Languedoc who offered his house to host the initiative of “holy preaching”—shared “the charism of preaching” to return to the roots of the Christian faith through apostolic preaching.

This is an opportunity to celebrate, without triumphalism and with a critical eye, a constantly evolving lifestyle that has borne rich fruit for the Church and for humanity. A charism of seeking truth, wherever it may be found, as lived by Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Meister Eckhart in the Middle Ages. A drive for justice, beginning with the forgotten of society, as exemplified by the School of Salamanca and Bartolomé de Las Casas in Chiapas in the 16th century, and in our times by Albert Nolan in Apartheid-era South Africa and Gustavo Gutiérrez in Shining Path-era Peru. A passion for beauty, which is the splendor of divinity, from Fra Angelico in Florence to Father Couturier in France, and Julián Pablo in Mexico. A yearning for spirituality from the unfathomable mystery of the living God, like Meister Eckhart on the banks of the Rhine, or the laywoman Catherine of Siena in medieval Tuscany, or the layman Piergiorgio Frassati in the 20th century, a mystical tradition never trapped by any feeling, idea or institution, but seduced by the loving divinity that is always unattainable and yet close.

Today I celebrate this feast with the Dominican friars and the Dominican family of Cotonou, enlivened by a youth choir with powerful voices and African rhythms, even amidst a Roman ritual that shows no sign of inculturation of the faith of the Beninese people. I hope that one day preaching, theology, and spirituality will reach that “decolonial stage” that will allow us, as peoples, to quench our thirst for the divine in the polyphony of spiritual traditions that weave us together as a human and divine creation in the heart of our communities.

Happy Feast of Domingo, the seeker and preacher of the saving truth.

Cotonou, August 8, 2026

August 8, 2026

English