THE VATICAN:The Vatican has censured Fr Jon Sobrino (68), a Jesuit priest in Latin America, for his writings on liberation theology.
It said that in them "only Jesus's humanity comes into play, not the Son of God made man for us and for our salvation". It also said that "these works contain propositions which are either erroneous or dangerous and may cause harm to the faithful".
In Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological Reading of Jesus of Nazareth, Fr Sobrino wrote of Jesus as someone whom the common man could relate to, as "our brother in relation to God".
Fr Sobrino, a Basque who has lived in El Salvador since the 1950s, survived an attack by soldiers in 1989 in which six Jesuit priests and two women died. He was a friend of San Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated by right-wing death squads in 1980.
Fr Sobrino's punishment comes two months before Pope Benedict's first trip to Brazil, where liberation theology is strong. In 2001, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pope initiated a study of Fr Sobrino's writings. His successor, Cardinal William Levada, found "notable discrepancies with the faith of the Church".