2. The category of ‘the poor’ appears to require downgrading in a number of respects, and not just the recognition that it is inappropriate to crown ‘the poor’ as the agents of history. They cannot, after all, be conceived exclusively as a socio- economic class, such as the proletariat, who will serve as the motor of history. Jon Sobrino (in Ensayo desde las Victimas) has proposed the category of the ‘victim’ as a more appropriate designation of this privileged locus theologicus. However, this is theologically contentious, as we see both in the official con- demnation of Sobrino’s work and in the fraternal spat between the Boff brothers in 2007–8 over precisely this issue, among others. Briefly, Clodovis has come to agree with Vatican offi- cials that such a description amounts to an idolisation of the poor. Christ may lead us to the poor, but there is no guarantee that an option for the poor will lead to Christ. For Leonardo, on the other hand, to abandon this tenet would amount to an outright betrayal of Liberation Theology.