These paths lead to Rome

National Catholic Reporter, June 2, 2000 by John L. Jr. Allen

Because the request for prosecution was rejected, the charges against Laghi have never been adjudicated. Some observers have stoutly defended Laghi, citing cases where he intervened on behalf of people who were arrested. Laghi himself summed up his role this way: "Perhaps I was not a hero, but I was certainly not an accomplice."

Laghi's deep animosity to leftist social movements made him an implacable foe of liberation theology, a stance he carried to his later career.

In 1995, Rome's Gregorian University invited Gustavo Gutierrez, the Peruvian theologian who coined the phrase "liberation theology," to a conversation with students. Laghi exercised his right as chancellor of the Gregorian to block the invitation. Gutierrez came to Rome anyway and spoke at the Brazilian college, where hundreds of students from the Gregorian came to hear him.

In 1997, Laghi ordered two teaching centers operated by the Conference of Mexican Religious Institutes suspended and decreed that two similar centers run by the Jesuits could henceforth be open to Jesuits only.

Some of the teaching centers, Laghi said, had "a highly radicalized and socialist-tinged orientation of liberation theology" and also "at times a strong adversarial character and theological progressivism in dogmatic and moral matters." Moreover, his letter added, "they had abandoned the `magisterial' style of teaching, substituting one that is known as `active' or `seminar-style.'"

Laghi also declared that certain writings of Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia of Chiapas were unacceptable for use in seminary formation in Mexico.