Report

"(WHOSE CHURCH IS IT?" IS A QUES- V tion increasingly raised, particularly by lib- eration theologians and members of Latin America's Christian Base Communities. That their voices have gained a hearing at all is a tribute to the reform set in motion two decades ago.

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NO SOONER WERE THE MEDELLIN CON- ference doors closed than the backlash began. In the decade following the conference, a growing number of bishops felt marginalized by its declarations as they viewed a Church in apparent rebellion.
IN MAY 1979, POPE JOHN PAUL II INFORMED Archbishop Oscar Romero that he would like a pri- vate meeting. For a long time, the pope had been re- ceiving distressing reports about the immensely popu- lar Salvadorean prelate.
Readers are invited to address letters to: Comment, NACLA, 151 W. 19th Street, 9th floor, New York, NY 10011.
"WHAT HAPPENS IN LATIN AMERICA "V will, humanly speaking, determine the fate of the church in the next century." The speaker was Pope John Paul II, the occasion the opening of the sec- ond general meeting of the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM) at Puebla, Mexico, in 1979.
Sanctuary: A Resource Guide for Understanding and Participating in the Central American Refugees' Struggle edited by Gary MacEoin. Harper & Row, 1985, 217 pp.
Peter Baird
In the aftermath of the earthquakes that have devasted parts of Mexico City since September 19, two conclu- sions can be drawn briefly as we go to press. First, the hardest hit are and will continue to be the urban poor; 5,500 dead, 300,000 homeless, 200,000 to 300,000 jobs lost and thousands still living in the streets.
Kent Johnson
"Under the dictatorship two kinds of culture existed in our country. On the one hand, a mimetic culture, based on imported ideologies and con- cepts of value and beauty.
THESE DAYS, CRYSTAL-BALL GAZERS IN the State Department must feel a little like the old Danish King Canute, who stood on the beach and or- dered the sea to turn back. Just three years ago, the list of crises in Latin America went little further than Nicaragua and El Salvador.