Student residence Camilo Torres

After the establishment of the Collegium Pro America Latina, a movement of Belgian priests began, traveling from Leuven to Latin America. But besides being a departure point, it was also an important arrival point: the bilingual university attracted many Latin American intellectuals and clergy. One of them was the Colombian Camilo Torres. He started working in Colombia's capital, Bogota, as a student priest and founded the Faculty of Sociology. However, he was removed from that position at the request of the cardinal, accused of communist sympathies. He joined the armed guerrilla and was shot by a patrol unit of the Colombian army on February 15, 1966.

As a tribute, the Leuven university named the new student residence in brutalist style after him in 1970.

It was for a long time the only mixed student residence in Leuven, a form of cohabitation that was then still met with much suspicion and only conditionally tolerated. For a long time, it had a progressive and even revolutionary image. source: KU Leuven Walking Tours

Camilo Torres Restrepo (Bogota, February 3, 1929 – Santander (department), February 15, 1966) was a Colombian priest and a precursor of liberation theology.

Camilo Torres Restrepo was born in 1929 in Bogota as the youngest child in a wealthy diplomatic family. And although the gifted young man had many future possibilities, he chose to dedicate his life to God and his fellow human beings. As a seminarian, he quickly confronted the acute poverty and many social injustices (large land ownership, illiteracy) in his country. Moreover, Colombia was suffering under the legalized exploitation by multinationals (especially in mining and plantations) from the US. source: Wikipedia

After his ordination as a priest in 1954, he moved to Katholieke Universiteit Leuven thanks to Cardinal Luque to study political and social sciences. At that time, the University of Leuven opened its doors wide to future Latin American intelligentsia. An atmosphere of Christian-inspired workers' struggle and theological renewal prevailed in Leuven. This fresh wind would later also be seen at the Second Vatican Council, for which Torres would also be consulted. As a student, he came under the influence of important figures from later liberation theology. He befriended François Houtart and Gustavo Gutierrez. As vice-rector of the Latin America College, where the Fleming Frans Wuytack and Bishop Óscar Romero also studied, he made contacts with various socially engaged Latin American students and formed a study group around socio-economic issues. In addition to his studies, he also manifested himself as an engaged priest, such as with Abbé Pierre in Paris, where he also came into contact with the Algerian liberation movement.

Blauwkruikje