Feature Blog 

The Temple Shakers Tissa Balasuriya

" Tissa Balasuriya, who has died at the age of 89, was an outspoken Roman Catholic priest and social activist in Sri Lanka who became the only liberation theologian to be excommunicated during the papacy of John Paul II. He was punished in 1997 for challenging official views on the Virgin Mary, the concept of original sin, the need for baptism, the right of women to become priests and the role and value of other world religions. After widespread international publicity, the ban was lifted a year later, but Balasuriya remained a strong critic of Joseph Ratzinger, who in his role as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had been in charge of the Vatican's proceedings against him...

. .... Balasuriya's depiction of the mother of Jesus Christ as a strong-willed revolutionary challenged centuries of European iconography in which Mary is portrayed as docile and voiceless. This was something which not even the Latin-American theologians had argued. A dedicated anti-imperialist, Balasuriya was acutely conscious of the leading role that the Catholic church and its missionaries had played in advancing the colonial cause." - The Guardian, Jonathan Steele, 2013

Liberation Theology emerged in the 1960s, from Latin America with Catholic Priests, reframing violence against the poor as institutionalised violence. Worth having a look at.