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Revolutionary Priest: The Complete Writings and Messages of Camilo Torres
English, Spanish (translation)
460 pages, Paperback
First published October 21, 1971
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 22, 2023
gosh this is such a beautiful translation and compilation of his work with such a wonderful forward
September 2, 2025
If every Catholic was like Camilo Torres, I would have joined the RCC myself.
August 14, 2025
"The Catholic who is not a revolutionary is living in mortal sin".---Father Camilo Torres
A female friend of mine, and of the few people who offered to visit me during my confinement, told me she had seen the message above scrawled on many a wall in Belfast, Northern Ireland during The Troubles. (And, no, she is not and never has been a Catholic). Makes perfect sense. Ireland, North and South, saw quite a few priests give aid and comfort to the Irish Republican Army, particularly Irish POWs locked up in British prisons, But, the O.G. of the Catholic revolutionary was Father Camilo Torres, the Colombian priest who threw his lot in with the poor and later joined the ranks of the Castroite guerrilla group the National Liberation Army (ELN), interestingly the only armed group in Colombia that has yet to sign a peace agreement with the government. (They're afraid of being massacred, just like M-19 and the FARC.) Father Torres first gained a social and political consciousness while studying theology and sociology and the Belgian Catholic University at Louvain. (Back in the 1970s I knew American and Latin American conservatives who blamed Louvain for inspiring revolution in Latin America. You know how devious the Dominicans are.) Returning to his native land the now anointed and radicalized Torres studied sociology first hand among the poor in Bogota. Goyaesque scenes of the horrors of urban poverty convinced him reform was impossible under capitalism, and the rigged Colombian political system, sometimes Liberal, sometimes Conservative, always reactionary, did not allow for peaceful change through the ballot box. Father Torres put away his cassock and headed for the hills to administer to the ELN. John Gerassi, whose THE COMING OF THE NEW INTERNATIONAL I have previously reviewed, has gathered in REVOLUTIONARY PRIEST every letter, manifesto and recording that could be found of Torres from his student days to sociologist to rural guerrilla. They are addressed not only to the workers and peasants of Colombia, and beyond, but also to trade unions, student groups and the rest of the left. (By the 1960s the Jesuits were to the left of the Latin American left.( For the Church he has only one message: "Where are you? Did Jesus teach His disciples to stay at home and pray for improvement?" Like Jose Marti' of Cuba before him, Torres decided his place was at the battle front, and like Mart' died in his first combat mission in 1966. A year later Che' Guevara would die in combat in Bolivia, with the same aureola around him. The ELN proclaimed him a saint, even if the Catholic Church, then under the ga-ga Pope Paul VI did not. Did Father Torres leave any living legacy? Fidel Castro once told a gathering of Protestant ministers in Jamaica, "Some speak of a tactical alliance between Marxists and Christians but I say why not a strategic one?" Or, as one priest put it, "I see Jesus as the founder of the world's first Communist Party". Either that, or the Judean People's Liberation Front.
A female friend of mine, and of the few people who offered to visit me during my confinement, told me she had seen the message above scrawled on many a wall in Belfast, Northern Ireland during The Troubles. (And, no, she is not and never has been a Catholic). Makes perfect sense. Ireland, North and South, saw quite a few priests give aid and comfort to the Irish Republican Army, particularly Irish POWs locked up in British prisons, But, the O.G. of the Catholic revolutionary was Father Camilo Torres, the Colombian priest who threw his lot in with the poor and later joined the ranks of the Castroite guerrilla group the National Liberation Army (ELN), interestingly the only armed group in Colombia that has yet to sign a peace agreement with the government. (They're afraid of being massacred, just like M-19 and the FARC.) Father Torres first gained a social and political consciousness while studying theology and sociology and the Belgian Catholic University at Louvain. (Back in the 1970s I knew American and Latin American conservatives who blamed Louvain for inspiring revolution in Latin America. You know how devious the Dominicans are.) Returning to his native land the now anointed and radicalized Torres studied sociology first hand among the poor in Bogota. Goyaesque scenes of the horrors of urban poverty convinced him reform was impossible under capitalism, and the rigged Colombian political system, sometimes Liberal, sometimes Conservative, always reactionary, did not allow for peaceful change through the ballot box. Father Torres put away his cassock and headed for the hills to administer to the ELN. John Gerassi, whose THE COMING OF THE NEW INTERNATIONAL I have previously reviewed, has gathered in REVOLUTIONARY PRIEST every letter, manifesto and recording that could be found of Torres from his student days to sociologist to rural guerrilla. They are addressed not only to the workers and peasants of Colombia, and beyond, but also to trade unions, student groups and the rest of the left. (By the 1960s the Jesuits were to the left of the Latin American left.( For the Church he has only one message: "Where are you? Did Jesus teach His disciples to stay at home and pray for improvement?" Like Jose Marti' of Cuba before him, Torres decided his place was at the battle front, and like Mart' died in his first combat mission in 1966. A year later Che' Guevara would die in combat in Bolivia, with the same aureola around him. The ELN proclaimed him a saint, even if the Catholic Church, then under the ga-ga Pope Paul VI did not. Did Father Torres leave any living legacy? Fidel Castro once told a gathering of Protestant ministers in Jamaica, "Some speak of a tactical alliance between Marxists and Christians but I say why not a strategic one?" Or, as one priest put it, "I see Jesus as the founder of the world's first Communist Party". Either that, or the Judean People's Liberation Front.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews