Leonardo Boff studied Philosophy and Theology. In 1970 he received a PhD in Theology and Philosophy from the University of Munich-Germany. He entered the Order of the Friars Minor, Franciscans, in 1959.
For 22 years he was Professor of Systematic and Ecumenical Theology at the Franciscan Theological Institute of Petrópolis, professor of Theology and Spirituality in several study centers and universities in Brazil and abroad, and visiting professor at the universities of Lisbon (Portugal), Salamanca ( Spain), Harvard (USA), Basel (Switzerland) and Heidelberg (Germany).
He was present at the beginning of the reflection that seeks to articulate the indignant discourse in the face of misery and marginalization with the discourse of the Christian faith, which generated the well-known Liberation Theology. He has always been an ardent defender of the cause of Human Rights, having helped to formulate a new perspective of Human Rights from Latin America, with the “Rights to Life and the means to maintain it with dignity.”
He is Doctor Honoris Causa in Politics from the University of Turin (Italy) and in Theology from the University of Lund (Switzerland), and has been awarded several prizes in Brazil and abroad for his struggle in favor of the weak, oppressed and marginalized, and Human Rights. On December 8, 2001 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in Stockholm, also known as the Alternative Nobel.
In 1984, because of his thesis linked to the Theology of Liberation exposed in his book Church: Charisma and Power, he was subjected to a process by the Sacred Congregation for the Defense of the Faith, former Holy Office, in the Vatican . In 1985 he was sentenced to a year of “obsequious silence” and deposed of all his editorial and academic functions in the religious field. Given the worldwide pressure on the Vatican, his sentence was lifted in 1986, and he could resume some of his activities.
In 1992, having been threatened again with a second punishment by the authorities of Rome, he renounced his priestly activities and promoted himself to the secular state. “Change of trench to continue in the struggle”: he continues as liberation theologian, writer, professor and lecturer in the most varied auditoriums in Brazil and abroad, advisor of social movements of liberating popular wedge, such as the Movement of the Sin- Earth and the Ecclesial Base Communities (CEB’s), among others.
In 1993 he presented a contest, and was approved, as Professor of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion and Ecology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ).
He currently lives in the Jardim Araras, ecological country region of the municipality of Petrópolis-RJ and shares life and dreams with the educator / rights fighter from a new ecological paradigm, Marcia Maria Monteiro de Miranda, thus becoming ‘father for affinity ‘of one daughter and five children, participating in the joys and pains of responsible motherhood. Live, accompany and re-create the emergence of the life of the ‘grandchildren’ Marina, Eduardo and Maira.
He is the author of more than 60 books in the areas of Theology, Spirituality, Philosophy, Anthropology and Mysticism. Most of his work has been translated into the main modern languages