The CEBITEPAL (Biblical Theological Pastoral Center for Latin America and the Caribbean) constitutes the institutional expression of CELAM's commitment to research, reflection, and theological-pastoral formation. Born from the evolution of ITEPAL and the unification of CELAM's academic centers, CEBITEPAL consolidates itself as an academic and ecclesial space that responds to the challenges of the signs of the current times. The process of renewal and restructuring of CELAM has emphasized that the training offer of CEBITEPAL —theological, pastoral, biblical, social, and ecological— must respond to the challenges of a theology embodied in the new sociocultural contexts and ecclesial impulses of our time, with a clear and determined option for the poor and excluded as a theological place and transversal axis of its proposal. 

In turn, it should be inspired by the ecclesiology of the People of God from the Second Vatican Council, in the theological-pastoral orientations of the General Conferences of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopate, and commit to promoting the process of implementing the Final Document of the Synod on synodality. With this horizon, CEBITEPAL not only offers academic programs at different levels —certificates, diplomas, bachelor's degrees, and doctorates— with a focus on transformative pastoral leadership, but also promotes spaces for research and publication that favor critical reflection and the renewal of ecclesial practices. For this, it also has the Medellín Theology Journal.

The current identity and mission of CEBITEPAL are understood from the logic of the exchange of gifts between local and continental Churches, offering the rich theological and pastoral experience of Latin America and the Caribbean, and, at the same time, remaining open to the learning that arises from encounters with other ecclesial realities of the world. In the context of its recent restructuring, CEBITEPAL has organized its formative and pastoral action based on three strategic coordinations and an office for global ecclesial and academic articulation. These areas will work together under the logic of differentiated co-responsibility and shared leadership. In this way, CEBITEPAL reaffirms its commitment to the construction of a Church that is constitutionally synodal and in a permanent state of mission, at the service of communion and the renewal of the “whole Church.”