BECs were not a product of liberation theology; they existed before it arose, and have thrived despite some Vatican reaction against the liberation theology movement. The liberationists built upon the BEC movement, giving it a more explicitly social edge. Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, who coined the term “liberation theology”, once said that ninety percent of the movement is the preferential option for the poor. The Latin American bishops, following up on their 1968 statement at Medellin which called for an “effective preference to the needy and poorest sectors” of society, issued in 1979 at Puebla a document entitled “A Preferential Option for the Poor”. Then in 2007, with Pentecostal and Evangelical movements threatening the faith of Catholics within the impoverished peripheries of Latin America’s mega-cities, these bishops at the Fifth Episcopal Conference of Latin America and the Caribbean ("Council of Aparecida") embraced the base communities as a pastoral model.