By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez
Yesterday I participated in the brilliant doctoral thesis defense of María Soledad Del Villar Tagle, a Chilean feminist thinker and activist, for the award of her PhD in the Department of Theology of Boston College,, after six years of mentoring as a thesis director, along with three outstanding colleagues of international renown: Lisa Cahil, Margaret Guider and Nancy Pineda-Madrid.
With this act I concluded my academic commitments with that American university, where I was fortunate to weave networks of critical thinking with some colleagues, especially doctoral students who are now professors at various universities around the world such as Laurel Potter, Valentina Nilo, Amirah Orozco and Maddie Jarrett, who represent the new voices of feminist theologies, queer, Latinx and disability, with a seal decolonial in their research.
Sole's thesis topic, as her colleagues affectionately call her, was inherently complex because it touches on an open wound in the Roman Catholic Church: justice for women survivors of sexual abuse committed by clergy in recent decades, particularly in Chile. Unfortunately, sexual abuse by clergy—against adult women and mostly male minors—is a phenomenon spreading like a silent cancer in other local churches around the world, where civil and ecclesiastical commissions have been established, especially in France, Australia, Canada, and the United States. In Mexico, unfortunately, the strength of the patriarchal pact It persists. The systemic practice of sexual and moral abuse is frequently associated with male leadership as an instrument of power in other religions as well, forming a patriarchal system with clerical religious justification, as analyzed by Kochurani Abraham in India.
And to make matters worse, sexual and moral abuse against women and vulnerable people has persisted for millennia in various institutions such as schools and the military, not to mention families, where men with toxic masculinity practices impose perverse forms of control over the bodies, minds, and desires of women and vulnerable people.
Below, I share some of my reflections that I proposed yesterday to open the dialogue with Sole in her thesis defense, which, virtually bringing together people from the North and South, created a community of listening, excited to receive the harvest of a living feminist theological thought.
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It is a pleasure to welcome you to the thesis defense of María Soledad del Villar Tagle, which crowns a research of profound significance and long academic work that contributes to Latin American feminist theology and its connections in other cultural contexts.
It is also an honor to preside as Advisor This academic act together with the admired colleagues Lisa Cahil, Margaret Guider and Nancy Pineda-Madrid, who make up the Academic Committee that has accompanied with a critical reading the thesis of María Soledad Del Villar Tagle, providing her with important elements to refine the argument, methodology and the theological implications of the thesis.
The title of the dissertation is in itself eloquent and challenging: “The Sexual Abuse Crisis in the Chilean Catholic Church: Feminist Theological Reflections for Survivors and for a Wounded Church.” The candidate confronts us with a debt of epistemic justice This research focuses on adult women survivors of sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy in the Roman Catholic Church in Chile in recent decades. It is an interdisciplinary study that combines qualitative research methodology within the theoretical framework of contemporary feminism and trauma studies. Through both lenses, it is possible to analyze the reality of these women survivors in its multifaceted complexity, as well as to consider the implications for the process of personal and communal healing. A crucial part of the thesis argument is the implications for an ecclesiology that addresses the causes of gender-based violence in the Church and its relationship to clericalism as an ideology of patriarchal power that persists in this ancient institution.
For my part, I want to begin this dialogue with you, Sole, by recalling three moments from your shared seven-year research process. Inspiring moments that, in my opinion, lie “behind the scenes” of your theological work.
The first instance was our meeting in Leuven, during the 2019 Congress on Systematic Theology, where you first told me about your nascent research project. Even then, your Latin American and feminist approach was opening up to questions that extended to other contexts and subjectivities experiencing diverse forms of violence, beginning with women, but also connecting with other subjectivities such as migrants, LGBTQ+ communities, and people with disabilities. We explored this together in the undergraduate course "God, the Person, and Society," where you collaborated as a teaching assistant upon my arrival in BC during the harsh winter of 2021, in the midst of the pandemic. That thread of violence against vulnerable people remains present in the fabric of your dissertation.
The second moment was the meeting with the Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) of El Salvador, to which Laurel Potter invited us. This meeting served as a moment to verify the results of her dissertation research on the ecclesiology of the BECs as a narrative theology of liberation, with its altars, memorials, and Sunday celebrations. In that colloquium, enriched by the visit to the site of Archbishop Romero's martyrdom, you emphasized your experience with the women's communities in Chile that embraced the see-think-act as part of their journey of following Jesus. Processes that connect you with your Chilean ancestors in the construction of a another world, Beyond patriarchy, like Gabriela Mistral and Violeta Parra in times of liberation, or Elizabeth Lira and the social workers of the Vicariate of Solidarity during the Chilean dictatorship. Another precious thread in your theological tapestry is this communal fabric of women's experience and their way of embodiment redemption through care practices through which they creatively confront the pedagogy of cruelty produced by the mandate of masculinity analyzed by Rita Segato.
The third moment I want to evoke today was the festival encounter It re-exists. The Spirit crossing peripheries, held in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2023. In particular, I want to recall here the clay workshop led by the ITESO student LGBTQ+ collective. We went guests to mold the reproductive organs with plasticine to then talk about our own relationship with our bodies. Then you were pregnant with Manuel and you molded your belly with the embryo inside using plasticine. The most surprising thing that afternoon was your dialogue with the Searching Mothers who mourn the absence of their children in Mexico. children. They connected with you powerfully, and you with them, through the presence—or absence—of their own motherhood experiences. Mutual care as sisterhood This translated into a memorable moment as an experience of bodies in resistance and re-existence. There I discover another precious thread in the loom of your thesis.
With these reflections in mind, I would like to ask you to explain more clearly two elements of your thesis that are already mentioned in the last chapter, but which will undoubtedly be part of future research: What is the spirituality of resistance among abused women and survivors that not only empowers them but also allows them to connect with other subjectivities in resistance? What rituals of sisterhood Can they connect with other collectives in resistance as an expression of the Church as the wounded body of Christ in the process of resurrection?
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And then a rich dialogue ensued about the practices through which women survivors imagine and create another possible world: rituals of sisterhood, the reinterpretation of Christian sacramental celebrations by returning to their symbolic and ethical source, as well as the connection with ancestral spiritualities that keep alive the sacramentality of Mother Earth as a gift from Divinity, and many more practices.
These questions remain open for future research. I have no doubt that feminist theology is still relevant today with a new generation of thinkers, proposing critical thought such as that of María Soledad Del Villar Tagle, thus contributing to building new expressions of a post-patriarchal Christianity as a fulfilled promise of life for everyone.
At the conclusion of the defense, the Committee unanimously approved the brilliant thesis, recommending its publication in Spanish to return to the survivors and their collectives the knowledge gained, as well as some articles or monographs in English on the topics that intersect in this interdisciplinary fabric, such as feminism, trauma and the spiritualities of the survivors.
Those who wish to see Sole's publications can find them here: https://psiucv.academia.edu/Mar%C3%ADaSoledadDelVillarTagle
Boston – San Cristóbal de Las Casas – Valparaíso, March 13, 2026