Word: nicaragua
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...should receive the new title of "Comandante Miguel." In fact, six years of increasingly harsh rule by the Marxist-oriented Sandinistas has brought Obando new prominence--and, indeed, notoriety. In 1985 Pope John Paul II elevated him to the College of Cardinals. He has emerged, in the eyes of Nicaragua's rulers, as their toughest critic. Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, himself a suspended Catholic priest, recently charged that Obando is "the principal accomplice of aggression against our people...
Obando has drawn sharp criticism not only from radical priests in the government but also from their religious followers. A breakaway church faction, strongly influenced by Marxist-leaning "liberation theology," claims about 20 of Nicaragua's 327 priests and perhaps as many as 50,000 followers, including some members of Nicaragua's "base communities," mostly poor, urban religious groups without priests. The breakaways find the Cardinal's anti-Communism counterproductive and are put off by his insistence that the church, while obligated to take moral positions, must refrain from active political engagement. "The Catholic institution here is folkloric," says...
That accusation was the strongest yet in a deepening test of wills between Nicaragua's left-wing government, which besides d'Escoto includes two other Catholic priests of Cabinet rank,* and the country's mainline church, in which 85% of Nicaraguan citizens profess membership. In proclaiming a state of emergency that suspended most civil rights last October, President Daniel Ortega Saavedra cited as its principal cause the security threat posed by the U.S.-supported contra forces poised on Nicaragua's borders. But many Nicaraguans believe that the directive was largely aimed at curbing the power of the church. Obando labeled...
...rein on Obando. At a May Day Mass last week, the Cardinal used his homily to defend the right to strike, which was among the guarantees suspended in October. He warned sternly that "Marxism does not have the solution for the working class." In the past Obando has attacked Nicaragua's unpopular universal military draft and urged young men to enter seminaries as a way of avoiding it. He has urged the government to negotiate with the contra rebels and declined to condemn the Reagan Administration's effort to provide the guerrillas with $100 million in U.S. funding, a stand...
...increasingly tense political climate of Nicaragua, however, it is becoming more difficult to say what that role should be. Some Catholics urge the Cardinal to try harder to heal the Nicaraguan church's internal rift, which in turn might lessen tensions with the government. Others advise him to speak out against repression even more forcefully. Says Activist Exile Baltodano: "The government of Nicaragua is still sensitive to international pressure." Considering the irreconcilable forces at play, continued confrontation between Obando and the Sandinistas seems virtually inevitable...