From Soviet Propaganda in the Third World by Maurice A. J. Tugwell

Soviet propaganda to Latin America has had to contend it that region’s historical and cultural experiences and with the opposition of a Roman Catholic population comprising nearly one half of the world’s Catholic population. The Latin legacy is of 19th Century romantic revolution, a romanticism whose irrationality presents problems for present-day governance. Jose Marti of Cuba prophesied that Latin America’s poor, downtrodden masses, possessors of subconscious truth untainted by objective reason, would one day rise in revolt. This romanticism . . . ¹⁴

As for the Church, a remarkable phenomenon grew in the 1970’s for which no simple explanation will suffice. Liberation theology, a theological and social movement, would possibly have developed regardless of Lenin and Castro, although it could not have developed without Marx. It consists of an amalgam of Marxist social analysis and a reinterpretation of the prophetic tradition in Christianity.

Comment I for one do not conceive how the marxian dogmas could be countenanced without the obligatory 'materialism'.

The Roman Church could -- and most probably would -- have been infiltrated, just as any human institution could, by the specialists in such things. Anybody , especially when trained to do so, can say 'God' and mean 'socialism' or something like. It seems such practices may have been frequent. (WPT).

Incorporating Marxist philosophy into the propagation of God’s word, many priests became radical social activists, sometimes participating in terrorism and revolution. By 1979 Malachi Martin, a personal assistant to Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, was reportedly telling the Vatican that at least two-thirds of all Catholic priests and nuns and about one-third of the bishops in Latin America were Marxist, by which he presumably meant that they adhered to or were tolerant of liberation theology.¹⁵ Whether or not one accepts these figures at face value, it is clear that the Church has diminished as an effective barrier to communist propaganda. And such theology has not been confined to the Latin nations. In its various forms, radical Christian witness has permeated many of the churches of North America and West Europe, where some Christians have become susceptible to Soviet propaganda, particularly the peace offensive. Pope John Paul II has opposed radical concepts, stating that the mission of the Church is evangelism and not politics and that true justice can only come from Christian principles.¹⁶ . . .

    14. See Robin Navarro Montgomery, “Psychological Warfare and the Latin American Crisis,” Air University Review (July-August 1982): 51.
    15. Quoted in Robert Chapman, “Collection in More Open Regions,” Intelligence Requirements for the 1980s: Clandestine Collection, Roy Godson, ed. (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, p. 51. See also Joseph Ramas, “Reflection on Gustavo Gutierrez’s Theology of Revolution,” in Michael Novak, ed., Liberation South, Liberation North (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1981).
    16. Chapman, “Collection,”, p. 53.

Psychological Operations The Soviet Challenge
Edited by Joseph S. Gordon
Boulder & London : Westview Press, 1988, pages 51 – 51, notes pp. 58-9.