The Second Episcopal Conference of Latin America was a bishops' conference held in 1968 in Medellín, Colombia, as a follow-up to the Second Vatican Council which it adapted in a creative way to the Latin American context. It took as the theme for its 16 documents “The Church in the Present Transformation of Latin America in the Light of the Council", with a focus on the poor and oppressed in society. It recognized that “the social situation demands an efficacious presence of the Church that goes beyond the promotion of personal holiness by preaching and the sacraments.” The bishops agreed that the church should take "a preferential option for the poor" and gave their approval to Christian "base communities" in which the poor might learn to read by reading the Bible. The goal of the bishops was to liberate the people from the "institutionalized violence" of poverty. They maintained that poverty and hunger were preventable.

Latin American liberation theology is a synthesis of Christian theology and Marxian socio-economic analyses, that emphasizes "social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples". Beginning in the 1960s after the Second Vatican Council, liberation theology became the political praxis of Latin American theologians such as Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, and Jesuits Juan Luis Segundo and Jon Sobrino, who popularized the phrase "preferential option for the poor". It arose principally as a moral reaction to the poverty and social injustice in the region, which Cepal deemed the most unequal in the world.