Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian priest known as the “father of liberation theology,” has died at 96. Liberation theology holds that ending poverty and helping those in need is an essential mission of the church. In his seminal 1971 book “A Theology of Liberation,” Gutiérrez wrote that poverty is “an attack on human dignity, and therefore, contrary to the will of God.” The school of thought was popularized in Latin America through the 1960s and 1970s. Despite pushback from the Vatican against liberation theology and its anchoring in Marxist principles, it continued to spread and played a role in political movements including the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua.