Nicaraguan priest, poet, politician, mystic
Father Ernesto Cardenal, who has died aged 95, was one of the most extraordinary Catholic priests of the 20th century, combining the roles — not always happily — of poet, Marxist revolutionary, mystic, monk, sculptor, academic and politician in Nicaragua, as well as becoming a familiar figure on the international circuit. With his long white hair, beard and beret, he cultivated the aura of a sage.
He was born Jan. 20, 1925, into a privileged family in Granada, Nicaragua.
After university and extended European travel, he returned in 1950. It was during this period that his first poems appeared in print.
In 1954, the young Cardenal was implicated in an attempted revolution against the repressive regime of the American- backed President Anastasio Somoza. Many of his friends were executed.
Cardenal then left the country for the U. S., and there he underwent a religious conversion. In 1965 he was ordained as a diocesan priest in Granada, and was assigned to the parish of the Solentiname Islands, an idyllic archipelago in the middle of Nicaragua’s largest lake.
He founded a base community centred on prayer and peasant spirituality, which later developed into an artists’ colony.
It was while there that his book El Evangelio de Solentiname ( The Gospel in Solentiname) emerged. Every Sunday the peasants would gather with Cardenal to reflect on the reading of the day: this evolved into a four- volume commentary on the Gospels, in which the voice of the poor could be heard. He also issued Psalms of Struggle and Liberation, a retelling of the psalms influenced by Nicaragua’s struggle against Somoza.
In 1970, Cardenal visited Cuba, and this led to his second conversion, this time to Christian Marxism.
Cardenal was now a strong supporter of the Sandinista National Liberation Front and became the rebels’ field chaplain. Two years later, the Sandinistas overthrew the dictatorship and Father Cardenal was appointed minister of culture.
Cardenal campaigned for what he termed “a revolution without vengeance.” But when Pope John Paul II visited in 1983, Cardenal was rebuked by the Pontiff, who reminded him that as a priest he could not have an active political role. Cardenal did not resign from government, and so was forbidden to practise as a priest. He remained culture minister until 1987.
Cardenal left the Sandinistas in 1994, though he continued to call himself a Christian Marxist.