@ARTICLE{Pietrzak_SVD_Ks._Andrzej_The_2013, author={Pietrzak SVD, Ks. Andrzej}, number={Tom 8}, pages={47-62}, journal={Studia Nauk Teologicznych PAN}, howpublished={online}, year={2013}, publisher={Polskia Akademia Nauk - Komitet Nauk Teologicznych}, abstract={The article discusses the category of the option for the poor, by answering four key questions: 1) What is the option for the poor?; 2) Who are the poor?; 3) Why the option for the poor?; 4) How to opt? The category of the option for the poor emerged in Latin America at the turn of the 60s and 70s of the twentieth century, as the fruit of an audit of faith and the personal, communitarian, social and ecclesial life . The author defines the category according to the teaching of the bishops (Medellin and Puebla), to John Paul II and Latin-American theologians . He highlights the need for clarifying the meaning of poverty and the poor, specifically of the current theological understanding of these concepts . He then describes main theological reasons of the option for the poor: God’s plan of salvation; the theology of creation; human dignity; the mystery of sin; the phenomenon of poverty as a place of proving the fundamental statements about God and Jesus Christ; an ecclesiological significance of the option for the poor. In the last part of the paper the author quotes the Polish translation of the so-called The Pact of St. Domitilla Catacombs, which illustrates one of more promising ways of implementing that option in both personal and ecclesial life.}, type={Artykuły / Articles}, title={The Option for the Poor}, URL={http://sd.czasopisma.pan.pl/Content/98020/PDF/Pietrzak.pdf}, doi={10.24425/snt.2013.112755}, keywords={the poor, poverty, option for the poor, Church of the poor, CELAM, Church in Latin America, Latin American theology}, }