Blackwell Reference Online

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Camilo Torres Restrepo was born into an upper-class family from Bogotá, Colombia on February 3, 1929. After studying law at the Universidad Nacional in Bogotá, he entered the seminary to study for the Catholic priesthood. Following his ordination in 1954, he was sent to the Pontifical Roman Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium to do graduate work in political science and sociology. After earning a licentiate, he returned to Colombia where he co-founded the sociology faculty with Orlando Fals Borda at the Universidad Nacional in Bogotá and served as national chaplain of the university student movement. During this time he also worked with various popular organizations devoted to social justice, especially agrarian reform. Influenced by Fidel Castro's Marxist revolution and some of the more radical theological intellectual movements in the Catholic Church, he began to cooperate with Marxist activists in his pursuit of social justice. In January 1965 he formed the Frente Unido (United Front), a leftist coalition dedicated to radical social reform, but through non-violent, lawful means. This brought the wrath of the Colombian Catholic hierarchy upon him and when the conservative prelate of Bogotá, Cardinal Luis Concha, forbade him to lecture, speak, or write on social problems and ordered him to resign from his professorship, he asked the cardinal to release him from active priesthood. ... log in or subscribe to read full text