The Puebla Conference: context and role of youth and education

Abstract

Fourty years ago, more than 190 Latin American bishops, attended by the newly elected Pope John Paul II, were gathered for the III General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate in Mexico, in Puebla de Los Angeles, between January 27th and February 13th, 1979. For Paul VI, The purpose of celebrating the 10th anniversary of Medellin was to translate his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi to Latin America: from “evangelization in the contemporary world” to “Latin America’s evangelization in the present and in the future”. The context was very disturbed for social, economic, cultural and political reality, as well as for the religious situation. Military dictatorships, torture, death and disappearance of thousands of people, resistance guerrillas, the emergence of neoliberalism, the right and neo-pentecostalism, and the election of a pope who lived under communist persecution in Poland, this was the environment that affected the Conference. In this moment of four decades celebration of this important event, the purpose of the article is to make memory of the socio-political and ecclesial context, besides recovering out two themes that are associated with the authors research: youth and education. The method is defined as content and document analysis, so it is bibliographic in nature. The conclusions show how the dynamics of the context acted in the essay of the document. And, despite of this, it was possible to move forward in some jagged aspects - youth and education - which also presented their limitations. An important “preferential option for young people” was defined as one of the pastoral priorities, and education was defined as one of the means for communion and participation.