Father Balasuriya, the founder of a third-world theological social justice movement, a writer, economist and human rights activist, died this morning in a private hospital in Colombo.
Aged 88, Balasuriya was a prolific writer having completed 35 books on theology and human rights.
In 1990, he was excommunicated after the Vatican warned that his book Mary and Human Liberation contained heretical content by apparently misinterpreting the doctrine on original sin while also casting doubt on Christ’s divinity.
Fr Balasuriya, who studied at Oxford University and the University of Paris, was also a founding member of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians, a group set up in 1976 which aimed to liberate the poor at the height of the Cold War.