How can one even speak of Christian salvation when the majority of the world's population lives in misery? What significance do the poor and oppressed, who bear a large part of the suffering, hold? The liberation theology concept of the 'crucified people' is an authentic attempt to respond to such questions from a Latin American perspective and simultaneously poses a challenge for contemporary soteriology. In the late 1970s, Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador and Salvadoran Jesuit Ignacio Ellacuría developed the theological concept of the 'crucified people.' Its historical-salvific paradigms and ecclesiological consequences are at the center of the investigation, which is based on a theological-biographical approach.