Panel: IN THE (ARCHIVAL) FOOTSTEPS OF PAUL GAUTHIER AND MYRIAM LACAZE. FROM POVERTY ISSUE TO LIBERATION THEOLOGY ?



1020.2 - AFTER 1967: LEAVING JERUSALEM. PAUL GAUTHIER AND MYRIAM LACAZE AT THE WORLD CONFERENCE OF CHRISTIANS FOR PALESTINE

AUTHORS:
Maligot C. (Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose ~ Bologna ~ Italy)
Text:
This paper reassesses the rupture 1967 marked in Gauthier and Lacaze's life and activism. Following the Six-Day War, they left Israel-Palestine to live in a refugee camp in Lebanon. This displacement marked a turning point in their decade-long activism on behalf of Arab refugees, first in Nazareth among workers, with the creation of the Compagnons de Jésus Charpentier (1957) and then with the transnational humanitarian network of solidarity, Rete Radié Resh (1964). Leaving Jerusalem, now under full Israeli control, set them on the road, off to other hotspots for liberation theologies. This paper explores a lesser-known aspect of their activism: their involvement in the World Conference of Christians for Palestine, using personal papers of other participants and diplomatic reports to retrieve their specific contributions. Founded in Beirut in 1970, the WCCP had a permanent secretariat split between Paris (Témoignage Chrétien) and Beirut, to raise Christian awareness on the Palestinian situation. The ecumenical organization fostered a political counter-theology in solidarity with Palestinians but ultimately failed to serve as an effective platform for Gauthier and Lacaze's ideas. It aimed to counterbalance post-Vatican II developments in Jewish-Christian relations and recent efforts to include the State of Israel in such a theological reappraisal. In doing so, it also reclaimed the Council legacy (and the memory of Gauthier's and others' activism at Vatican II) for itself, through its stance in favour of the poor. However, the WCCP had little influence on the subsequent development of Palestinian liberation theology. Initially propelled by the first generation of left Christians who had been active as early as the 1950s alongside Middle Eastern Christians, the WCCP remained entangled with European-based approaches to poverty and development that clashed with the more radical voices emerging from North Africa and the Near East, among which were Gauthier and Lacaze.