Jose sedano: Pedagogy of answer and social participation

Jose de Jesus Sedano González was born in Bolivar, a small town located in the south of the department of Santander, Colombia, on February 25th 1922. He enters the Dominican Novitiate in 1939 and is named priest eight years later, on the 5th January  1947 in Bogota. Influenced by the French liberating movements, he will manage to approach the renovating currents of theology and the new Thomiste thought that will give a singular stamp to his future intellectual work.

On the pedagogical front, Sedano develops an innovating experience at the Apostolic Seminary Jordan of Saxony (Bogota), of which he becomes rector in 1954. After the passing of the years, the alternative regency of this work combined with the maturity of new vital experiences, will be gathered in one of his main works, Pedagogy of Answer. ­

It is also important to note his participation and understanding of the main social problems of the Latin American and Colombian society of all times but especially of the Sixties where the first popular organizations and the movements of resistance against the oppression of classes encourage an ecclesiologycal model of participation and fight for social justice. Sedano knows the substrate of these transforming dynamics and sympathizes with them, as shown by his proximity with Camilo Torres, who will be later known in the history of the continent as “the guerrilla priest”.

In this way, the present communication aims at  outlining the intellectual history of Sedano’s Pedagogy of Answer from three central contexts that allows us to understand his work: the French libertarian context, the new pedagogy in Colombia and the awakening of social movements in Latin America.