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
