Sebastian Kappen

Sebastian Kappen (4 January 1924, Kodikulam, Travancore, Indian Empire – 30 November 1993, Bangalore, India) was an Indian Jesuit priest and liberation theologian.

Born into a traditional Nasrani family in Kodikulam, Kappen entered the Society of Jesus at the age of 20 (in 1944), and was ordained a priest on 24 March 1957. He pursued studies at the Gregorian University (Rome), obtaining a doctorate in Theology (1961) with a thesis on Religious Alienation and Praxis according to Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. This was a time when Marxism was growing in influence in his home state of Kerala, in India.

Away from scholasticism and its essentialism, he found in Marxian tools of social analysis effective instruments to understand the people's alienation from freedom and loss of ability to contribute to the wellbeing of society.

Henceforth, Freud, Marx and the gospel of Mark became the dialectical poles of Kappen's thought and life, in view of liberating the human person from hidden oppressive psychological and social forces. Healing and wholeness are found in the person of Jesus, the Son of God.

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