On October 8, 2025, the Catholic University “Our Lady of the Assumption” in Asunción, Paraguay, hosted the International Philosophy Conference “Contributions to Cultures: Philosophy, Christianity, and Latin America,” organized in collaboration with the Organization of Catholic Universities of Latin America and the Caribbean (ODUCAL). The event, which ran until October 10, brought together prominent scholars, philosophers, and theologians from the region to reflect on the role of Christian philosophy in the Latin American context.

The inaugural conference: a call to reflection and action

Dr. Rodrigo Guerra López, renowned philosopher and Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, opened the conference with a lecture entitled  “Christian Philosophy in Latin America: Identity and Challenges .” In his presentation, Guerra López shared his personal and academic experience, highlighting the importance of rethinking how Christian philosophy and faith can contribute to Latin American cultures and how the region can, in turn, enrich universal Christian thought.

Guerra López recalled the  world congresses of Christian philosophy held in past decades , especially those held in Monterrey (1986), Quito (1989) and Lima (1992), where figures such as Venant Cauchy, Octavio Nicolás Derisi, Evandro Agazzi and Julio Terán Dutari SJ participated. These meetings, according to the philosopher, marked a milestone in the reflection on the identity and role of Christian philosophy on the continent, although over time their continuity declined.

Latin America as an epistemic horizon

One of the central themes of the conference was the idea of ​​Latin America as a “particular epistemic horizon.” Guerra López emphasized that, although Christian philosophy is universal by nature, its expression in Latin America takes on a unique tone, shaped by the history, culture, and social realities of the region. “Christian philosophy in Latin America is not a mere adaptation of European thought, but a voice that connects the centers of thought with the lucidity and creativity of the peripheries,” he affirmed.

The philosopher also addressed the  tension between the universal and the particular , emphasizing that the region, as a cultural “periphery,” should not be seen as a space of deficit, but rather as a “laboratory of meaning” that challenges hegemonic centers. In this context, Latin American Christian philosophy draws on multiple sources: the scholastic tradition, European personalism, but also oral narratives, community symbols, and popular artistic expressions.

The legacy of Francis and the  Aparecida Document

Guerra López referred to the teachings of Pope Francis and the  Aparecida Document  (2007), of which the Pontiff was the main speaker. According to the philosopher, this document reflects an incarnated Christian philosophy, which articulates the universality of revealed truth through the concrete lives of Latin American peoples. “Francis has shown how the periphery can enrich the center, offering concepts and experiences that illuminate not only Latin America, but the Church and the entire world,” he noted.

A call for unity in diversity

In his conclusion, Guerra López invited participants to reflect on how Christian philosophy in Latin America can be a  bridge between the universal and the particular , without falling into uniformity or isolation. “Truth is not exhausted in a single cultural expression; its richness is manifested in the multifaceted nature of its historical forms,” ​​he stated.

The  International Philosophy Congress in Asunción  is presented as a key space to revitalize the dialogue between faith, reason, and culture in Latin America, reaffirming the  commitment of Catholic universities  to the search for truth and the promotion of integral humanism.

Full text of the inauguration:

Christian philosophy in Latin America: identity and challenges

Rodrigo Guerra López *

International Congress of Philosophy

“Contributions to Cultures:

Philosophy, Christianity and Latin America”

Catholic University “Our Lady of the Assumption”

Asunción, Paraguay

October 8–10, 2025

Introduction

I would like to thank the authorities of the Catholic University “Our Lady of the Assumption,” Rector Cristino Bohnert, Dr. Luis Ayala, Dr. Stella Maris Olmedo, and the Scientific Committee of this Congress, headed by Dr. Maximiliano Llanes, for the invitation to open these important academic and ecclesial sessions. I am very pleased with this meeting dedicated to rethinking how philosophy and the Christian faith can contribute to our Latin American cultures, and how Latin America itself can contribute to cultures in general. A topic like the one chosen might seem, to the unwary observer, like any other commonplace. However, let me share a story with you.

Long ago, in the distant year of 1986, the Second World Congress of Christian Philosophy was held in Monterrey, Mexico. For a 20-year-old student like myself, meeting the large number of Latin American and European philosophers who gathered there was very impressive. I remember Venant Cauchy, Ivan Gobry, Octavio Nicolás Derisi, Evandro Agazzi, Julio Terán Dutari SJ, Heinrick Beck, Battista Mondin, Alberto Caturelli, Diego Sánchez Meca, and many others, unfortunately forgotten. Agustín Basave was the host and president of the Mexican Catholic Society of Philosophy. Stanislaus Laudusans SJ was also one of the organizers and president of the Inter-American Catholic Association of Philosophy.

Three years later, in 1989, the Third World Congress of Christian Philosophy was held in Quito, Ecuador. Some names were repeated, while others appeared as novelties. The host was Julio Terán Dutari SJ. I remember that Abelardo Lobato OP, Josef Seifert, Fernando Rielo, Mariano Artigas, Paul Poupard, and some of my current dear collaborators and friends from the Center for Advanced Social Research (Pablo Castellanos, Jorge Navarro, Fidencio Aguilar, etc.) and the author of this article participated.

Apparently, there was a Fourth Congress of this type in 1992 in Lima. I have never had access to the proceedings. I only have some indirect testimonies indicating that Massimo Borghesi, Alberto Methol Ferré, and Andrea Aziani participated. Finally, a Fifth Congress was held in Lublin, Poland, in 1996. Apparently, the organizers were Zofia Zdybicka, the Pontifical Council for Culture, and the World Union of Catholic Societies. Speakers included Herman De Dijn, William Desmond, Josef Seifert, Angelo Scola, and Bishop Stanislaw Wielgus.

The Sixth Congress was planned to be held in Rome, during the Jubilee of the Year 2000. At the time, people spoke of a “jubilee of Christian philosophers.” However, this never happened. And so, the World Congresses of Christian Philosophy came to an end.

Part of the information I note here I obtained while talking with Monsignor Julio Terán Dutari SJ about fifteen years ago. I don’t know if you’ve met him, but he was undoubtedly one of the most notable Christian philosophers in Latin America. A specialist in Erich Pzywara SJ, he made great contributions to the metaphysics of analogy and freedom. He was rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, bishop of Ibarra, and president of the International Federation of Catholic Universities. Monsignor Terán Dutari SJ told me that we should focus on one thing: the efforts made to revive the contribution of philosophy and the Christian faith in the cultures of the world, and especially in Latin America, had stellar moments. However, they gradually declined. To the point that the most recent conferences are the least known and have the fewest bibliographical references, for example.

I visited Bishop Terán Dutari SJ last year in Quito. He had lost his speech and many of his physical and intellectual abilities. I found him in a wheelchair, living in a Jesuit house, very thin and sick. At first, he didn’t recognize me. However, it was very beautiful to see that when I thanked him for everything he had done in his life spreading Christian philosophy and the thought of Erich Pzywara SJ, he became noticeably enthusiastic. For a moment, it was very clear that he remembered. He moved one of his hands enthusiastically and smiled.

Looking at his contracted body, but his hopeful face, made me think about the responsibility we have to continue on this path.

It is a fact that since 2000, associations and activities related to the relationship between philosophy and Christianity have declined and, in many cases, have disappeared. However, it is also a fact that the real reflection of Christian philosophers throughout Latin America is very intense and has become very diverse. In virtually all philosophical circles in the region, we find not only Christians but also thought that allows itself to be provoked by the Christian event. Whether in analytical philosophy, among specialists of key authors of continental philosophy, in the spaces of liberation philosophy, the decolonial turn, or in Thomistic, Augustinian, and Rosminian circles, whether in the worlds of phenomenology or critical theory, and even in the very diverse postmodern atmospheres, Christianity constantly appears and reappears in Latin America.

If this is so, perhaps what we need is to find ourselves together again, called together by the experience of faith. Therefore, there is nothing better than being here today, beginning these days in which we will explore the various ways in which philosophy and Christianity mutually enrich each other.

Below, I will attempt to outline a simple hypothesis about the identity and challenges of Christian philosophy in Latin America. Each of us has our own intellectual history, and yours truly is no exception.

My early training was strongly influenced by the classical thought of Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, and Saint Thomas Aquinas. I will always be grateful for this providential philosophical foundation. Later, during my postgraduate studies, I met Lonergan and João Batista Libanio, SJ. During my doctorate, I undoubtedly immersed myself in personalism and the early phenomenological school (Husserl, Scheler, Hering, Conrad-Martius, Stein, Hildebrand) and its Polish offshoots (Ingarden, Wojtyla, Styczen). But it was right there that one of my most beloved professors, Rocco Buttiglione, introduced me to the thought of some authors he knew or had been friends with. I am referring to Augusto Del Noce, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Juan Carlos Scannone SJ, and Alberto Methol-Ferré.

This path, which from an extrinsic perspective would not be difficult to view as particularly heterogeneous, has been guided by a constant concern for the re-articulation of faith and reason. Reason always helps faith express itself rigorously, and faith always helps reason discover not only a broader horizon but also a structural tension toward the primacy of the given.

In the following pages, perhaps a bit of all this will be perceived between the lines. My hypothesis about the identity of Christian philosophy cannot be unrelated to my own history.

1. Latin America: a particular epistemic horizon

The question of Christian philosophy, far from being merely academic, is existential for each of us. Étienne Gilson believed that Christian philosophy is philosophy created by Christians; that is, the content of Revelation cannot be placed in parentheses when a Christian dares to think. The Christian life receives a provocation from Revelation that does not replace, much less neutralize, reason. On the contrary, it receives a light that strengthens its yearning for truth and opens it to an unsuspected horizon.

Reason yearns for universality, but it is always situated in particular contexts. Christian rationality experiences this with extreme drama. Philosophy, as the rational search for truth and the science of being, is universal by vocation; but every act of thought is always embodied in a tradition, a language, and particular historical conditions.

In Latin America, the tensions between the particular and the universal take on a unique significance, difficult to reduce to conventional categories. On the one hand, just as there is no such thing as—and cannot be—a “Mexican chemistry” or “Ecuadorian physics” in the strict sense, many reasonably believe that there is no such thing as a “Latin American Christian philosophy,” as if it were an autonomous, self-contained discipline, completely heterogeneous to its counterparts elsewhere.

The expression “Latin American Christian philosophy,” however, will be valid as long as it possesses a universal dimension that connects it with other philosophical enterprises, equally situated, and likewise capable of transcending the particular as particular.

We can say the same thing in a more classical way: philosophy, as a rigorous science of reality, is governed by universal principles; but its concrete act,  philosophizing , never occurs in an abstract vacuum. It is always embedded in a specific space and time, shaped by the historical, social, and cultural circumstances that guide  each  person’s questioning of reality and their response to it.

On our continent, specific circumstances have shaped  a particular epistemic horizon:  a web composed of inheritances and fractures, impositions and hopes, cultural fusions and conflicting memories. None of this alters  the universal essence of Christian philosophy,  but it does give it its own accent: it conditions the tone of its responses, sets the pace of its development, and defines the urgencies that drive it. Therefore, the true underlying problem is not deciding whether or not we respond to the universal—for all authentic thinking is measured in that direction—but rather discerning how to respond, from the uniqueness of the person, to the universal horizon, based on the Latin American experience.

Here, the tension between the universal and the particular is experienced not only at the level of ideas, but in the very interiority of the human person as a person. Thinking from Latin America means living in tension: we share in a reasoning with a universal vocation, but we exercise it from the traces and accents of our circumstances. The decisive question is not only what Christian philosophy responds to, but how each person, each biography, from their dual condition of universal and singular, responds to their epochal challenges.

This perspective leads us to reinterpret the  center-periphery tension  in Latin America beyond geographical, sociological, or economic criteria. It is, above all, a cultural and epistemic issue: being “periphery” does not imply marginalization, but rather the ability to see the world from another angle, with other priorities and other shades of meaning. The philosophy that emerges here does not limit itself to repeating what comes from the center; it filters it, interrogates it, and, at times, subverts it, drawing on extreme experiences, community realities, and symbolic languages ​​that do not fully fit into hegemonic logic.

Responding to the universal from Latin America is a double act: the great questions that have shaped the philosophical tradition are embraced and assimilated, and at the same time, these questions are enriched by the concrete experience of our peoples, their popular religiosity, their historical memory, and their unwavering hope in the midst of precariousness. In this sense, the periphery ceases to be a  place of deficit  and becomes a  laboratory of meaning  that challenges the center, challenging it to reexamine its certainties in light of what often falls outside its usual canons.

Our region, marked by being simultaneously center and periphery, resembles—as my admired Juan Carlos Moreno Romo suggests—a “philosophical suburb”: a border space where diverse traditions, historical tensions and extreme experiences converge. [1]

This suburb is not a lack, but a power. In the American spirit—in its mixture, in its historic youth, and in its capacity for resilience—there is a moral and creative reserve that, if cultivated, can offer new contributions to the great universal traditions. The Christian philosophy that is conceived and lived in Latin America is, in this sense, a voice that connects the centers of thought with the harsh lucidity and creative power of the peripheries. In its own historical personality, it embodies the constitutive tension of every person: to be, at the same time, universal in its vocation and singular in its fulfillment. This tension, far from being resolved in uniformity or isolation, demands what some of us have called a “Latin American resurgence.” [2]  The capacity to safeguard the living core of tradition while making it fruitful in new contexts.

Thus, in Latin America, Christian thinking is not an abstract or sterile exercise, but a task rooted in an unavoidable contact with concrete realities: the structural poverty that marks the life horizon of millions, the inequality that fractures the social fabric, the cultural fusion that blends indigenous, African, and European heritages, the popular religiosity that structures communities, and the stubborn hope that survives adversity. These elements are not mere backdrops; they constitute what we might call an  epistemic circumstance , that is, a set of historical and cultural conditions that determine how the philosophical question is perceived, formulated, and answered.

This epistemic circumstance means that Latin American Christian thought generally begins not with abundance but with scarcity  ; not with homogeneity but with  mixture ; not with a guaranteed order but with a coexistence marked by  fragility  and  forced creativity.

A significant portion of Latin American Christian philosophy is challenged to address the great universal questions not from the comfort of a university classroom, but from the experience offered by the street, the public square, social struggles, the parish, and everyday life, permeated by multiple cultural contradictions.

Defining Latin America as a periphery, as a “slum,” does not imply degradation or marginalization, but rather a recognition of its historical and cultural status: it is a border space that belongs to the  West . We are  the West of the West ; that is,  we do not belong to the hegemonic West.

We are, rather, a Western frontier marked by the “open veins” of colonial wounds, by hybridizations that destabilize pure categories, and by the persistence of conflicting memories that still fester, more due to North American neocolonial interventions than to ancient European impositions.

In this intermediate and border territory, universal ideas don’t arrive intact or are passively received; they are refracted, translated, and sometimes creatively distorted to respond to genuine contexts and needs.

From this perspective, Christian philosophy in Latin America responds to the universal in a unique way: it could not be otherwise. Methodological priority is given to concrete, multifaceted reality over abstract ideas and purely formal explanations. When we practice philosophy, we Latin Americans do not speak from the privilege of those who view the world with certainty, but  from the vulnerability of those who inhabit it in precariousness and uncertainty.  Far from impoverishing reflection, this situation gives it critical and testimonial force. Thus, categories such as dignity, the common good, and justice acquire new meaning when understood in light of the concrete lives of peoples, where daily survival, popular religiosity, and faith are intertwined in a single vital horizon.

In this same vein, Latin American Christian philosophy draws on multiple sources: not only from the scholastic tradition or European personalism, but also from oral narratives, community symbols, artistic expressions, music, and popular religious practices that carry an implicit philosophical charge. This intrahistorical dimension, which combines the cultured and the popular, defines the particular tone and texture of Latin American thought.

However, it is impossible to consider the particularity of Latin America without considering the borderland status of Spain itself, since it was precisely Spain that introduced these lands to Western culture. In European intellectual history, Spain has also been a peculiar periphery, a “suburb” in its own way: a border of the continent where the Latin, Germanic, Arab, and Jewish strands converge, and where the historical experience of interbreeding, expulsions, and tensions between faith and reason generated a distinctive way of thinking. Latin America’s intellectual, cultural, and spiritual closeness to Spain is, therefore, natural and greater than with other European traditions. Understanding Latin America as a “suburb” requires recognizing that Spain was also—and is, in a certain sense—a “suburb” within Europe. Thus, the borderland and mestizo nature of both spaces constitutes an indispensable key to understanding the unique way in which Christian philosophy is thought and lived on the American continent.

In this way, our region becomes a space where Christian philosophy acts as a critical mediator between the universal ideal and concrete reality. This mediation is largely achieved thanks to the particular way in which faith has entered the lives of our peoples, through Mary, since the 16th century. Yes, the logic of the crown sought to impose faith by means of the sword. However, in more than one place, faith was embraced by a different logic that challenged the logic of the crown. This logic is characteristic of inculturation, of incarnation, of the way pre-Hispanic peoples embraced Christianity through the maternal mediation of multiple Marian invocations.

Of course, this phenomenon is not uniform, yet it is significant: the Marian form of Christian faith is what “informed” conversions and the matrix from which a new personal, communal, and historical synthesis was formed. This Marian form of Christian faith not only nourished the inner life of the new people who began to emerge in the 16th century, but also shaped highly original cultural products, such as the Latin American Baroque and the Christian philosophies that permeate our history.

2. The intellectual “dependence” of Europe

Intellectual dependence on Europe has been a constant object of criticism in Latin America since the 19th century. For many Latin Americanist thinkers, this dependence threatened to perpetuate a peripheral condition,  always subordinated to foreign cultural matrices.  However, as Scannone has suggested, dependence is not necessarily synonymous with submission or sterility. It can become a stimulus for creativity, an opportunity to reinterpret, translate, and redefine universal concepts based on our own circumstances. [3]

In other words, it’s not about rejecting European culture or adopting cultural isolationism, but rather about exercising critical discernment: receiving, yes, but with creative freedom; integrating, yes, but reconfiguring what we’ve received with the emphasis and energy unique to Latin America.

José Vasconcelos, in  La raza cósmica , radicalized this intuition by proposing that Latin America was not simply a cultural receptor, but a point of convergence and synthesis of all cultures and races. [4]  For him, mestizaje—biological and cultural—constituted a creative power unprecedented in history, capable of surpassing the limits of preceding civilizations and of giving rise to a new universal humanism.

For Scannone, the so-called “intellectual dependence” can become an asymmetrical but fertile dialogue, in which European notions are filtered and transformed by social realities, cultural symbols and historical narratives. In this sense, this hybridization can be identified with what Bolívar Echeverría called “the baroque”: a historical and cultural form that emerges in the context of modernity, but which does not allow itself to be completely absorbed by its hegemonic logic. The baroque is, for Echeverría, a strategy of resistance and appropriation: in the face of the instrumental and utilitarian rationality imposed by the modern-colonial project, the baroque responds with an aesthetic and an ethic that combines the imposed with its own, the European with the indigenous and the African, in a tense synthesis that subverts the original codes [5] . This is not a simple juxtaposition, but a reinterpretation that disguises, folds, and transforms the dominant elements to put them at the service of a life that seeks to affirm itself in its difference, from its very personal circumstance.

We cannot even summarize here the many philosophical Christian branches, currents, and movements that emerged during the New Spain period, during the struggles for independence of our nations, and in the subsequent periods. We only dare to note that becoming aware of the history of Christian philosophy in Latin America undoubtedly helps to demonstrate how the message of the Gospel is not meant to be confined to private life, but rather to transform and, to a certain extent, reinvent the world, and philosophy itself. [6]

In his work  Philosophical Discernment of Historical Action and Passion: A Poseo para el Mundo Global desde América Latina [7] , Scannone develops this intuition in a strictly philosophical key. There he argues that the historical experience of the Latin American peoples—made up of oppression and resistance, pain and hope—offers a privileged hermeneutical place to rethink human action and passion within the framework of globalization. For Scannone, philosophical discernment must attend not only to universal principles, but also to the historical and cultural mediations that embody them, because it is in that incarnation that truth is verified and acquires full meaning.

Methodologically, Scannone’s proposal articulates three dimensions:

• Hermeneutics : attention to the symbol, the story and the cultural mediation of language.
• Phenomenology : description of lived experience, especially that of the poor as a “place of manifestation” of practical truth.
• Personalism : centrality of dignity and relationship as foundations of all action and reflection.

This vision implies that the universal is neither denied nor diluted by particularisms, but rather is verified in the intersection with the concrete experience of the people. Philosophical truth thus acquires an  added measure  of evidence when it passes the test of its practical fruitfulness: if it does not generate justice, if it does not heal wounds, if it does not open up the future, something remains to be considered. In this sense, Scannonian philosophy extends the impulse of Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco Javier Clavijero: universality yes, but universality transformed by the encounter with the other.

For Scannone, the verification of truth no longer occurs solely in the classroom, the treatise, or the intellectual “center,” but in what we have called the “suburb”: the neighborhood, the peasant community, the popular procession, the communal soup kitchen. In these spaces, reason learns a different grammar: that of symbol, celebration, mourning, promise, and pact.

3. The “Francisco” case

This intellectual background is, in turn, the foundation for many of the central aspects of Pope Francis’s teaching. It is no coincidence that his ecclesial and social vision is strongly influenced by the  Aparecida Document  (2007), of which he was the principal rapporteur. Aparecida draws on the heritage of Medellín and Puebla and projects it into the 21st century, proposing a Church that goes out in missionary spirit, close to the poor and capable of discerning the signs of the times from the periphery. This document is permeated by an incarnate Christian philosophy that embraces the universality of revealed truth but articulates it from the perspective of the concrete life of the Latin American peoples. The influence of his teachers, Lucio Gera, Alberto Methol, and Juan Carlos Scannone, is evident there . [8]

Today, both the  Aparecida Document  and the teachings of Pope Francis demonstrate the remarkable fruitfulness of this approach for Latin American Christian thought. They have succeeded in integrating dimensions that for centuries seemed strained: faith and culture, universality and particularity, tradition and creativity. The Christian philosophy that emerges from this process is no longer limited to “adapting” the great tradition to a peripheral context; from that same peripheral context—converted into an epistemic locus—it proposes and enriches universal debate, offering categories and experiences capable of illuminating not only Latin America, but the Church and the entire world.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s thought is deeply influenced by the experience of the slums, understood not only in a geographical sense, but as a human space where the center meets the periphery, where the hegemonic culture is challenged by concrete lives and historical wounds. At this vital and symbolic crossroads, Bergoglio learned to read reality “from below,” discerning the signs of the times both in dialogue with the universal Magisterium and in direct contact with the streets, the slums, and popular movements.

Philosophically and theologically, his formation is permeated by the  Nouvelle Théologie , especially by authors such as de Lubac and von Balthasar, whose insistence on the unity between nature and grace, and on the centrality of Revelation as a living event, resonated with the Latin American perspective of a faith incarnated in history. Added to this are the influences of the so-called “nonconformists” prior to the  Nouvelle Théologie , such as Mounier, with his communitarian personalism, and Blondel, with his idea of ​​action as the meeting place between the human and the divine. However, the figure who most profoundly marked his thought was Guardini, especially in his understanding of polar tension as a constitutive feature of reality: a logic not of the elimination of opposites, but of fruitful integration [9] .

This intellectual framework did not remain for Jorge Mario Bergoglio as abstract baggage or a mere theoretical framework. He knew how to connect it with Latin American reality—mixed, unequal, and creative—to formulate a practical discernment capable of responding to the concrete challenges of its communities. The  Aparecida Document  (2007), of which he was the principal drafter, constitutes a paradigmatic testimony to this method: the preferential option for the poor is presented there not as a temporary sociopolitical strategy, but as a hermeneutical key that allows the Church to “go forth” to encounter the world from its margins, bringing with her the richness of its cultures, its popular faith, and its own forms of hope.

In Francis, we find a way of thinking in which philosophy and theology nourish each other. His theological vision rests on a solid philosophical foundation that not only supports his doctrinal approaches but also allows him to engage in dialogue with the world based on natural reason. This is evident in encyclicals such as  Evangelii Gaudium ,  Laudato si’  , and  Fratelli tutti , where social and cultural reflections do not depend exclusively on revealed authority but are articulated in categories understandable to all people of good will, regardless of their faith.

A characteristic trait of Bergoglio—and one that is reflected in his teaching as Pope—is the importance he gives to literature as a source of thought formation. His constant references to Martín Fierro—a founding poem of Argentine popular identity—as well as to Dostoevsky, show how literature functions for him as a privileged place for understanding the human condition. In the “Letter of the Holy Father Francis on the Role of Literature in Formation” [10] , he emphasizes that literature broadens the horizons of the intellect and the heart, teaching us to look at life with nuances, to listen to diverse voices, and to grasp the moral density of human stories.

In this sense, Francis embraces something that Unamuno had already intuited: the novel—and, by extension, narrative literature—is the quintessential place for expressing and narrating the inner history; that is, the hidden and profound life of peoples, that subterranean dimension where their values, fears, and hopes are forged. For Francis, this narrative dimension is not ornamental, but constitutive of Latin American Christian thought: in it, faith becomes culture and culture opens up to faith.

Therefore, in our opinion, the teachings of Pope Francis embody a Latin American Christian philosophy that offers an original path to overcoming many of the tensions that have marked the continent’s intellectual history. It is not a question of choosing between the universal and the particular, between European tradition and the American experience, but rather of fostering mutual interfertilization in a critical and creative dialogue.

In this proposal, the itinerary of thought—from the suburbs to the center and from the center to the suburbs—does not describe a unidirectional shift, but rather a movement of dynamic reciprocity: the periphery brings to the center a perspective that enriches it, while the center, by welcoming this perspective, renews and broadens its own horizon of understanding. Francis addressed a clear message to cultural, political, and ecclesial centers: universal truth is not the exclusive heritage of any geographical location or cultural tradition; its reception and expression are enriched, and sometimes purified, by the encounter with the concrete realities of peoples.

This principle responds to what might be called  pluriformity  in  unity : in this case, not a unifying unity that nullifies diversity, but the unity of reality, expressed in multiple cultural, historical, and linguistic forms. The demand for this unity—the search for truth, goodness, and beauty—is the same everywhere and at all times; what changes is the way each human community recognizes it, formulates it, and embodies it in its concrete life.

This is a decisive contribution to Christian philosophy in general, regardless of its place of origin. The response to the universal—to the great questions about being, truth, goodness, and beauty—remains identical in its essential core;  what varies is the grammar of its expression, modulated by the historical and cultural circumstances of each people.  In this sense, Francis’s proposal presents itself as an incarnated and hospitable humanism, capable of dialoguing with all cultures, of narrating the truth from the peripheries without excluding the centers, and of integrating them into a common horizon where unity is confirmed precisely in the richness of its plural forms.

4. In conclusion: universality that allows itself to be inhabited by the particular

When we review the history of Christian philosophy in Latin America—from scholasticism transplanted to the Indies, through the defenses of Las Casas, the Creole claims of Clavijero, the liberal drifts of the 19th century, the epistemic mestizaje of the 20th century, the emergence of various philosophies of liberation, and the new paths opened by the new generation of Christian philosophers in recent years—it shows us that the tension between the universal and the particular is not an obstacle to be resolved once and for all, but a constitutive condition of Christian thought, and especially of its expression in Latin America.

At its core, Christian philosophy has always had to sustain this tension. The universal—truth, goodness, and beauty as transcendent elements of being—claims validity for all times and places; the particular, on the other hand, requires that truth to be embodied, expressed, and translated into specific languages ​​and cultural forms. Herein lies the originality of the Latin American experience: its capacity to recognize that there is no contradiction between the unity of reality and the diversity of its historical forms, but rather a pluriformity within unity that enriches and deepens access to truth.

In this sense, the teaching of Pope Francis presents itself as a providential point of arrival and, at the same time, as a new point of departure. His thought—formed by the European tradition (De Lubac, Balthasar, Guardini, Mounier, Blondel, etc.) and molded in the Latin American suburbs—offers a method of reciprocity: from the center to the periphery and from the periphery to the center, in an exchange in which the particular illuminates the universal and the universal is confirmed in the incarnate truth of the peripheries.

The proposal that emerges from this for Christian philosophy is clear: the response to the universal is always the same in essence, but the way of formulating and living it changes according to the history, culture, and openness of each people.

A truth that does not allow itself to be challenged by the particular runs the risk of becoming abstract; a particularity that does not open itself to the universal is exhausted within its own limited horizon. The maturity of Latin American Christian philosophy lies in knowing how to inhabit this intermediate space, capable of speaking from Latin America to the entire world, without losing its emphasis or its belonging to the communion of truth.

At this crossroads—as the trajectory of Francis and the legacy of Aparecida demonstrate—Latin American Christian philosophy is no longer a simple peripheral adaptation of a center, but a full interlocutor in the universal debate. It is capable of offering an incarnated humanism, deeply connected to real people and their concrete circumstances, which  transforms the tension between the universal and the particular not into a wound to be healed, but into a fertile field  where truth becomes life and life opens to truth.

*  PhD in Philosophy from the International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein; Professor at the Pontifical Lateran University; Ordinary Member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and the Pontifical Academy for Life; Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America; E-mail:  [email protected]   I am grateful to my friends and collaborators at the Center for Advanced Social Research ( www.cisav.mx  ), and especially to José Miguel Ángeles, for reflecting on these topics.

***

[1]  Cf. JC Moreno Romo,  Filosofía del arrabal , Anthropos, Barcelona 2014.

[2]  Cf. A. METHOL FERRÉ , Il Risorgimento Cattolico Latinoamericano,  CSEO-Incontri, Bologna 1983.

[3]  Cf. JC Scannone SJ, “Latin American Christian philosophy. Its current situation and its tasks”, in  Stromata , vol. XXXIII, no. 1-2, 1977, pp. 3-41.

[4]  Cf. J. Vasconcelos,  The Cosmic Race: Mission of the Ibero-American Race , Ministry of Public Education, Mexico 1983.

[5]  B. Echeverría,  The modernity of the baroque , Era Editions, Mexico 2000.

[6]  See: M. Beuchot – JR Sanabria,  History of Christian Philosophy in Mexico , UIA, Mexico 1994; M. Domínguez Miranda, “Approaches to a History of Christian Philosophy in Latin America (18th-20th Centuries)”, in  Universitas Philosophica,   Pontifical Javeriana University, 10, no. 19 (1988), pp. 13-33; Ibid.,  Non-Scholastic Christian Philosophy in Latin America . Andrés Bello Catholic University, Caracas 1991.

[7]  JC Scannone SJ,  Philosophical discernment of historical action and passion: A proposal for the global world from Latin America . Prologue by Jean Ladrière, Anthropos Editorial / Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico 2009.

[8]  Cf. M. Borghesi,  Jorge Mario Bergoglio: An intellectual biography,  Encuentro, Madrid 2018.

[9]  Cf. Ibidem.

[10]  August 4, 2024.