Heritage walk - Leuven's solidarity activism for Latin America

There are many important, but little-known historical lines between the University of Leuven and Latin America. Due to its status as an ancient intellectual center on the one hand and its progressive image on the other, the University of Leuven exerted a great attraction during the last century on Latin American students, both clerics and laymen. For example, the canonized Chilean syndicalist and Jesuit Alberto Hurtado (theology, pedagogy), the Colombian priest-resistance fighter Camilo Torres (sociology) and the Uruguayan liberation theologian Juan Luis Segundo (theology) were allowed to call themselves lovainistas.

In the second half of the twentieth century, the university expressed its support for the fight against poverty and oppression in Latin America by awarding honorary doctorates to progressive key figures, such as the Brazilian 'red bishop' Dom Hélder Câmara (1970), the socially engaged Salvadoran archbishop Óscar Romero (1980) and the Salvadoran liberation theologian Jon Sobrino (1985).

There was also a great interest in the troubled continent within the Leuven student community. Especially after the murder of Óscar Romero, a few weeks after he had received his honorary doctorate in Leuven, solidarity activism in Leuven would reach its peak.

This walk leads you past some locations that recall this shared history of the University of Leuven and Latin America. source: KU Leuven

KU Leuven and solidarity activism with Latin America in pamphlets - source: KADOC

Van Naamsestraat, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
To Naamsestraat, 3000 Leuven, Belgium

Routing Walk - most beautiful, Manual