The thought of Bishop Manuel Larraín continues to offer keys to understand the current challenges of the Church in Latin America and the Caribbean. This was stated by Mons. Lizardo Estrada, general secretary of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council (Celam), during the presentation of the second volume of the Epistolary of Manuel Larraín, a work resulting from the research of Sister Ángela Pérez-Jijena and the priests José Ignacio Fernández Saldías and Carlos Álvarez, s.j.
Through a video message, Mons. Estrada congratulated the researchers for their work and highlighted the figure of Mons. Larraín as one of the founders of Celam and as a bishop who, decades ago, already raised issues that remain at the center of contemporary ecclesial reflection.
For Mons. Estrada, one of the most significant characteristics of the Chilean bishop was his understanding of the Church as the People of God and his defense of an active participation of the laity. He recalled, in this sense, a letter addressed to Cardinal José María Caro Rodríguez in 1947, in which Larraín warned about a limited lay participation to the execution of decisions made by the hierarchy. “Don Manuel Larraín is a bishop ahead of his time”, said Mons. Estrada, noting that these intuitions appeared around a decade before the founding of Celam and later found a central place in the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council.
Church that learns from action
The secretary general of Celam also highlighted the concern of Bishop Larraín for Christian formation and pastoral action. In his letters, the bishop questioned a formation excessively focused on prior instruction and defended the concrete experience of the apostolate as a privileged space to form believers.
Mons. Estrada reiterated his assertion that “the great formation for the apostolate is the apostolate itself”, a perspective that allows understanding his commitment to a Church involved in reality and not confined solely to its internal spaces.
This view was also expressed in his criticisms of certain practices of the Roman curia. In a letter from 1960 addressed to Miguel Darío Miranda, then president of Celam, Larraín questioned the prior review of the works of the Latin American bishops, considering that this procedure could affect the dignity and autonomy of the episcopal reflection of the continent. For Mons. Estrada, these positions show a bishop willing to express his disagreements clearly, but from a perspective aimed at seeking better paths for the Latin American Church.
In the face of social challenges, a third way
Another of the highlights during the presentation was the reading that Larraín made of the political and economic reality of his time. In a letter from 1962 addressed to the Chilean bishops Emilio Tagle and Bernardino Piñera, he distinguished between the materialism linked to communism and that which he identified in the structures of capitalism. His proposal, Mons. Estrada recalled, was not to choose between the two models, but to assume to its ultimate consequences the principles of the Church's social doctrine.
In this perspective, Larraín understood ecclesial action as a task of integral transformation. The Church, he pointed out, should promote a renewal that reached the structures, the spirit, and the lifestyle of the people and communities. For the Chilean bishop, this transformation should also be reflected in a pastoral planning capable of responding to the conditions of Latin America. In 1964 he raised the need for apostolic planning both nationally and continentally, based on the historical and sociological reality of each country and the continent as a whole.
Mons. Estrada emphasized the proposal that this planning should have “a strongly missionary emphasis” and that it should address not only the conservation and transmission of faith but also the social and economic challenges derived from underdevelopment. Mons. Larraín believed that this planning should constitute “one of the most important tasks of Celam,” a statement that shows, according to Mons. Estrada, the importance he attributed to the continental episcopal organization as a space for articulation and service to the local Churches.
The path to Medellín
The journey presented by Mons. Estrada also allowed for the identification in the correspondence of a piece to understand the process that would lead to the II General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate, held in Medellín in 1968. After a period of tensions between Celam and the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, Mons. Larraín noted in 1964 a change in institutional relations and the approval of new statutes for the Council. The following year, in a letter whose recipient is not identified with certainty, he proposed the convenience of calling for a new General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate.
The proposal initially contemplated holding the meeting in Bogotá, in 1968, coinciding with the International Eucharistic Congress. The objective would be to study the application of the conclusions of the Second Vatican Council to the Latin American reality. The city finally chosen was Medellín, but Mons. Larraín's proposal constitutes, according to Mons. Estrada, the first public mention of an initiative that would ultimately become one of the decisive events in the history of the Church on the continent.
“This was the first public mention of the call to the historic Conference of Medellín”, noted the general secretary of Celam, who related that initiative to the task that subsequent generations continue developing: to receive, interpret, and put into practice the Second Vatican Council from the Latin American reality.
Legacy for a synodal Church
Mons. Estrada invited those who participated in the presentation, held at the Faculty of Theology of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, to to take on the continuity of this task. He recalled that Mons. Larraín died more than six decades ago in a car accident while returning to his diocese after a mission related to his service as president of Celam in Ecuador. His trajectory, however, left a mark that transcends his era.
Mons. Estrada evoked different dimensions of his figure: his liturgical and social concern, his pastoral thinking, his participation alongside other bishops in the called “Pact of the Catacombs” during the Second Vatican Council and his friendship with who would later become Saint Paul VI. He also emphasized the combination between his intellectual formation and his closeness to simple people, whom he recognized as privileged recipients of the Gospel.
The secretary general of Celam concluded by highlighting the freedom with which Mons. Larraín defended his convictions and recalled one of his last references to Pope Saint John XXIII: “more than fighting evil, it is better to expose the truth”. In this way, the second volume of his correspondence recovers documents from a decisive moment for the Latin American Church, and also allows recognizing the historical roots of a way of exercising the episcopal ministry marked by collegiality, continental responsibility, the participation of laypeople, and the faithful reading of social challenges.
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