This study seeks to resolve a conundrum in the historiography of the Catholic Church in Peru. Most studies have characterized the Peruvian Catholic Church during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as conservative and ultramontane. Nevertheless, by the late 1960s, Peru had become a bastion of liberation theology. Some historians have explained this sudden appearance of policies more beneficial to the poor as simply a reaction to exterior pressure emanating from Vatican II (1962) and the Second Conference of Latin American Bishops (1968). Cubas Ramacciotti, however, looks to forces within the Peruvian Church itself to explain this phenomenon. He argues that, while certainly ultramontane and pro-elite, the Peruvian Church by the early twentieth century was encouraging the creation of pro-labor Catholic social movements in an attempt to stave off the possibly graver effects of the conflicts between labor and capital. Cubas Ramacciotti's more nuanced approach helps to explain more fully how liberation theology was able to find fertile ground in the Peru of the 1960s, but it does leave some questions unanswered.

The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 deals with the complex relationship of the Church with the Peruvian state during the late nineteenth century and through 1935. Even though the Church maintained its support of the elites during this period, as Cubas Ramacciotti points out, liberal and later positivist politicians sought to gain more control through secularization. Despite the fact that Catholicism remained the state religion, the Church suffered losses, such as the right to control legal marriage. As a result, the Church developed a festering mistrust of the materialism of positivism and the rising influence of capitalist elites.

Part 2 examines the Peruvian Church's attempts to counter its political losses through social influence. Focusing solely on politics had failed; therefore, the Church sought to hold back the tide of secularization by changing what was at its heart—the public discourse. By creating Catholic social and political institutions such as youth groups, schools, and perhaps most importantly the Catholic University in Lima, Church leaders hoped to influence the intellectual and social life of Peruvians.

Part 3 is by far the most important contribution of the work. In it, Cubas Ramacciotti argues that the Peruvian Church's discomfort with both the rise of the socialist left and the abuses of the capitalist elite led it to forge a path that helped Peruvian workers. The Church, more than any other institution, was aware of the abuses by large landholders in the countryside and the poor working conditions in the cities. The Church feared, accurately as it turns out, that such conditions would inevitably lead to conflict between capital and labor, bringing about the rise of socialism. Therefore, the Church created Catholic labor groups and mutual aid societies such as the Circle of Catholic Workers in all the major cities, to help workers cope with the abusive capitalist system. It was this focus on social issues that, Cubas Ramacciotti argues, laid the groundwork for the Peruvian Church's embrace of liberation theology.

This well-researched monograph helps to fill gaps in historians’ understanding of the rise of liberation theology in Peru. If the book has a fault, it is that it stops in 1935. Missing from the work is how the rise of Catholic labor movements in the 1920s and 1930s ultimately led to the Peruvian Church embracing liberation theology in the 1960s. This three-decade gap warrants discussion. Such a discussion is possibly the work of another monograph, either by this author or another.