LIBERATION theology is alive and well in Brazil although largely unseen, like "green grass under the snow", the president of the Brazilian bishops' conference said this week.
"We are not producing many new books and articles now, but that does not mean the theology of liberation is not reacting,said Archbishop Luciano Pedro Mendes de Almeida of Mariana, a city to the north of Rio de Janeiro.
The bishop said many of the fundamental questions raised by liberation theologians were "now in the common thinking of the Church", and that they were discussed at last October's synod of the Latin American bishops in the Dominican Republic.
Pope John Paul II seized the opportunity of the October conference to restate his disapproval of liberation theology, but this week Archbishop Almeida denied the Vatican had tried to silence its advocates.
Last year the eminent Brazilian liberation theologian. Leonardo Boff, resigned from the priesthood after a series of Vatican restrictions on his preaching.