On the 60 years of the Easter of Monsignor Manuel Larraín and the 70 years of trajectory of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council (Celam), the second volume of the critical edition of his correspondence was presented, a work that allows tracing the thought and action of one who was one of the founders and presidents of the Latin American episcopal organization.
The volume, titled “Episcopal collegiality”, brings together 138 letters, preserved mainly in the archive of the Diocese of Talca and, significantly for this edition, in the archive of Celam. The latter allow for a reconstruction especially of the period in which Mons. Larraín served as president of the organization and closely follow the process of emergence and consolidation of a structure intended to support the pastoral life of the Churches of the continent.
The presentation brought together ecclesiastical and academic authorities, including Monsignor Galo Fernández, Bishop of Talca; Monsignor Lizardo Estrada, General Secretary of Celam; Professor Sandra Arenas, Dean of the Faculty of Religious Sciences and Philosophy at the Catholic University of Temuco; and Carlos Álvarez, one of the editors of the work. The event was broadcast for participants from different countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Co-responsibility that precedes the synodal language
Xavier Morales, director of Research, Publications and Library of the Faculty of Theology, noted that the new volume corresponds to number 115 of the Annals of the Faculty of Theology, a collection started in the 1940s with the purpose of contributing to the theological heritage of the continent.
The academic reminded that the first volume of the correspondence, published as number 114, was dedicated to the social Catholicism. The second addresses the collaboration between the bishops and paves the way for a third volume that will complete other dimensions of Larraín's thought and ministry.
Morales related the work to a recent experience: the surprise of a journalism student upon finding a bishop dialoguing with businesspeople and with civil society. For the academic, the correspondence allows us to understand that this link is not a novelty. There is, he said, a tradition of dialogue between Chilean bishops and civil society. From this perspective, he proposed that the book also helps to view synodality differently: “let us stop being surprised when we talk about collaboration between bishops, about synodality, about common projects as if they were a surprising novelty in the 21st century.” In his opinion, the trajectory of Mons. Larraín demonstrates that ecclesial co-responsibility has earlier roots.
Paths of communion
For his part, Monsignor Galo Fernández, successor of Mons. Larraín in the diocese of Talca, emphasized precisely that historical dimension. He pointed out that the letters present a thought that is being constructed “in the midst of history,” marked by tensions and conflicts.
For the bishop, there appears a particularly significant teaching: the episcopal collegiality is built among people who can think differently, confront each other and seek common paths. In that process of listening and seeking a communion, he stated, a spirit is already anticipated that will later gain greater strength in the Second Vatican Council and in the understanding of the Church as the people of God.
“There is space for divergence, but also a search for fidelity and communion”, he noted.
Bishop who wanted to know the reality before acting
In his presentation, Monsignor Lizardo Estrada, general secretary of Celam, who participated virtually. He defined Mons. Larraín as a “bishop ahead of his time”, especially for his reflections on the Church as the people of God and for the role he granted to the laity.
Mons. Estrada emphasized that many of the concerns that today are part of the synodal reflection were already present in the writings of Mons. Larraín, including among them the co-responsibility and the protagonism of the laity. He also recalled his criticism of a formation separate from action: “The great formation is the apostolate, the apostolate itself.”
Another highlighted aspect was the social dimension of his thought. In a letter from 1966, Mons. Larraín warned about two forms of materialism: communism, supported by an atheistic philosophy, and practical materialism linked to the capitalist structures. In the face of both, he defended the need for a response based on the social doctrine of the Church.
Contemporary synodal process
For Mons. Estrada, this perspective led to a renewal that should not be limited to the structures, but also reach the spirit and lifestyle of the believers. In that sense, he related Mons. Larraín's thought to issues that continue to be present in the contemporary synodal process.
The general secretary of Celam also recalled the continental vision of the Chilean bishop. In a letter from 1964, Mons. Larraín raised the urgency of an apostolic planning at the national and continental level, based on the historical and sociological reality of each nation and the continent as a whole.
The planning should have a missionary emphasis, attend to the new generations, and also consider the economic-social dimension. For Mons. Larraín, this task should constitute one of the priorities of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council.
Towards Medellín: an intuition that was born before the Council
In the presentation, reference was made to a letter from Mons. Larraín in which he proposes the celebration of a general conference of the Latin American Episcopate to apply the conclusions of the Second Vatican Council to the reality of the continent.
The proposal initially suggested holding the meeting in Bogotá, in 1968, taking advantage of the International Eucharistic Congress. Finally, the meeting would take place in Medellín and would become one of the decisive events for the Latin American Church.
The intervention thus emphasized that Mons. Larraín's proposal was not simply a retrospective reflection on the Council. His letters show that there was already a prior search for continental articulation and for a pastoral response of its own for Latin America.
Mons. Estrada invited the university students present to continue that boldness. He recalled that Mons. Larraín died six decades ago in a car accident while returning to his diocese after a task as president of Celam in Ecuador. He described him as a bishop with a broad intellectual formation, close to Paul VI and sought after by various Churches around the world, but rooted in his own Church and close to the simple and the poor. He also recalled his participation alongside other bishops in the elaboration of the Pact of the Catacombs during the Second Vatican Council. As a summary of his pastoral style, he recovered an expression from Mons. Larraín inspired by Saint John XXIII: “More than combating evil, it is better to expose the truth”.
“Groping in the dark”: reading reality to discern
Professor Sandra Arenas proposed as the title of her intervention “Groping in the dark”, a phrase taken from a letter by Mons. Larraín from 1955 addressed to the apostolic nuncio Sebastián Vallejo. In it, the bishop warned that decisions were being made “without exact knowledge of our reality.” For Arenas, this statement constitutes one of the keys to understanding his self-perception as a bishop: governing pastorally required knowing the social reality rigorously.
The historian emphasized that Mons. Larraín promoted offices of religious sociology, engaged in dialogue with researchers like Luis Joseph Lebret and François Houtart, and commissioned studies on geography and religious sociology. His intention was that pastoral action would start from a reading of reality. Arenas stated that Mons. Larraín anticipated elements that would later be adopted more strongly by conciliar theology. The sociocultural reality had to be a place where the Church could listen and discern.
The professor also highlighted the conception of social doctrine present in the letters. In a letter from 1953, Mons. Larraín defined it as “expression in the economic and social realm of the dogma of the mystical body of Christ.” This understanding, Arenas explained, allows for understanding his participation in issues such as agrarian reform and peasant unionization not as a parallel activity to his ministry, but as part of his own understanding of the pastoral office. He also remembered one of his statements regarding communism: “Communism cannot be defeated with weapons of violence.” For Larraín, the Christian response had to be based on love and not on violence.
Latin American Church with its own voice
In a letter from 1960, Mons. Larraín warned about the risk of importing pastoral models without considering the characteristics of the continent. “Latin America requires a Latin American pastoral”, he said, although he acknowledged that the experiences from Europe and other continents could be utilized as long as they were assimilated and adapted. Arenas related this stance to the creation and consolidation of Celam. In his letters, he explained, Bishop Larraín conceived of the organization as a space for communion, exchange, and common representation of the Latin American Churches.
This vision, however, was accompanied by tensions with Roman bodies, especially with the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. In a letter from 1960, Larraín questioned what he considered excessive intervention over the Celam. In another letter, he even posed a question that, according to Arenas, anticipated later debates about the authority of the episcopal conferences: “Are the agreements of an episcopal conference just pieces of paper?”.
The professor argued that these tensions reveal two ways of understanding the relationship between the universal Church and the particular Churches. At the same time, they show that the Celam and other Latin American episcopal structures functioned as spaces where a theology of communion and a practice of territorial collegiality began to develop before its explicit formulation in the Second Vatican Council.
From the episcopate to synodality
Arenas suggested that the legacy of Mons. Larraín should not be understood solely as an artifact of ecclesial archaeology. His letters contain, in his view, a living heritage for current debates. He defined that legacy as a true episcopal style, understood not as a technique of governance, but as a concrete way of inhabiting the world, the Church, and one's own ministry.
That style would be imbued with three elements: listening to reality with rigor, discern historical processes from faith, and act in a collegial and co-responsible manner alongside the laity. “This style allows us to transition from the classic concept of episcopal collegiality to the ecclesiology of synodality,” he stated.
Although Mons. Larraín did not use current vocabulary, his consultation practices, the open debates with experts and laity, both in Celam and in his diocese, and his search for ecclesial consensus were presented as background to a path that would find a decisive expression in Medellín.
Academic project supported by several universities
Carlos Álvarez, one of the editors, explained that the volume is the result of a work developed over several years alongside Ángela Pérez and José Ignacio Fernández. He thanked the institutions that made the research and editing possible: the Faculty of Theology and Religious and Philosophical Sciences of the Catholic University of Maule, the Faculty of Theology of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and Annals of Theology, in addition to the support of research projects.
He also acknowledged the contribution of Professor Samuel Fernández, who initially promoted the project and made the documents available to the team, as well as the work of Patricio Jiménez, a professor at the Institute of History and research assistant.
Álvarez explained that the title “Episcopal collegiality” wants to reflect the practice of collaboration that Mons. Larraín developed during his ministry. This practice encompassed both the collaboration among Chilean bishops, which led to the creation of the Chilean Episcopal Conference in 1957, as well as the first steps of consolidation of Celam and the period of the Second Vatican Council.
The editor also shared the importance of the correspondence to understand the process of transformation of the Church from a predominantly Western matrix towards a global Church, capable of recognizing the plurality of local Churches. In that process, the Latin American Church transitioned from being a “reflection Church” to a “source Church”, capable of formulating its own responses to the pastoral, social, and economic challenges of the continent.
Memory that belongs to the entire Latin American Church
The editing work also allowed for valuing the relationship between the archives of Talca and Celam. Although most of the letters in the volume come from the archive of the Diocese of Talca, those preserved in the archive of the Latin American episcopal organization proved especially relevant for reconstructing the period when Larraín presided over Celam. These correspondences allow for following the daily life of the birth and consolidation of the organization, as well as the positions it adopted regarding the pastoral mission of the Churches on the continent.
The presentation also highlighted the alliance between different universities. The Catholic University of Maule, the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, and the Catholic University of Temuco came together in a research project that was presented as a concrete example of collaborative work.
For the participants, recovering the figure of Mons. Larraín also implies accepting that his memory does not exclusively belong to Talca. As Arenas pointed out, it is a figure that “belongs to the whole Church,” not just to Chile or to Latin America.
Four volumes to reconstruct an itinerary
The presentation allowed for a preview of some of the contents of the upcoming volumes of the critical edition. The third volume, titled Pastoral Discernment, will address among other topics the development of Catholic Action, the tensions it generated within the episcopate of the time, the role of Mons. Larraín in the consolidation of a politically active laity and his pastoral action in the diocese of Talca.
It will also include a dossier on his discernment regarding the Schoenstatt Fathers and the evolution of his view on this movement in Chile. The fourth volume will be of special interest to historians, as it will gather correspondence related to the crisis of 1947 and the controversy known as The enemies of Christ, linked to Monsignor Augusto Salinas and his conflicts with Father Ulpiano and with Mons. Larraín.
According to what was presented during the launch, this correspondence will allow for the study of the role that Mons. Larraín played in the rescue of the National Falange and in the opening towards a plurality of the Catholic vote in the ecclesial practice of the time. Therefore, the material will be relevant both for the political history of Chile and for the history of the Church.
The event concluded with recognition of the work of the researchers, the participating universities, the Celam archive, and those who made the transmission possible.
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