Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Despite the many disagreements between Marxist and Christian ideologies, these revolutionaries could logically see each other as potential allies. A conservative reaction began immediately within the Catholic Church itself. Exponents of liberation theology have been passionate and eloquent, but never a majority. By the late 1970s, a new pope, John Paul II, threw the power of the Vatican fully against them. John Paul’s formative experience as a Catholic leader in communist Poland made him inexorably opposed to Marxism, and he believed that Latin America’s religious revolutionaries had crossed the line. The Vatican’s campaign began at the 1978 Conference of Latin American Bishops held in the Mexican city of Puebla. It included the systematic appointment of Latin American bishops hostile to liberation theology and even the official “silencing” of liberation theologians. Likewise, the pope visited Nicaragua in 1983 to support a conservative archbishop against Sandinista revolutionary leaders who were Catholic clergy and exponents of liberation theology. . . . “Silence!” shouted the pope three times at the angry proSandinista crowd, in a memorable moment of direct confrontation." [Born in Blood & Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, 4th Ed., p. 295]