ABSTRACT
The Life and Peace Institute, the Christian Peace Research Institute based in Uppsala, Sweden has launched a Research Network on the Churches’ Role in Peace and Development. In Brazil and the Southern Cone of Latin America, the doctrine of the “national security state” was combined with a military-led economic project which combined an allegedly “modernizing” approach with massive human rights violations. The Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference in Brazil, perhaps more than any other national hierarchy, played an important and courageous role in forming a new pastoral practice to respond to conditions of military rule. The Philippines was, for the long years of the Marcos dictatorship, a country where the churches were deeply involved in the struggle for justice and peace. The assessment of church activity in that period and the churches evaluation of the extent to which the hopes placed in the Aquino government have been fulfilled, makes the basis for an important case study.
