Word: vatican
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...other hand, as the Pope understands Vatican II, the church should let the laity work out policy details and fill public offices. The Pope has praised and encouraged lay organizations that attempt to put Catholic ideals into practice in everyday life. Two of his conservative favorites are Opus Dei, a tightly disciplined international organization of 74,000, and Comunione e Liberazione, a less structured group with about 60,000 adherents in Italy and growing numbers in Europe and Latin America...
...Nicaragua, four Roman Catholic priests remain as officials in the Marxist- led Sandinista government in defiance of canon law, which prohibits priests from holding public office. One of the priests was expelled from the Society of Jesus in December; the other three priests were forbidden in January by the Vatican to perform their sacerdotal duties if they did not resign in two weeks. Insists Fernando Cardenal Martinez, the former Jesuit and Nicaragua's Education Minister: "There is no basic religious problem between the church and the revolution. What exists is a political confrontation...
...such maneuvers were necessary last month when Rome issued the suspension order to Cardenal and the three other rebellious political priests in Nicaragua: Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, Culture Minister Ernesto Cardenal Martinez, and Edgard Parrales, Ambassador to the Organization of American States. In the Vatican's view it was merely a question of enforcing canon...
Last September Boff was invited to Rome for a discussion with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's watchdog Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Boff recalls the four-hour meeting as "cordial--Ratzinger mainly just sat and listened." The cordiality may have been influenced by the presence at the Vatican of two of Brazil's most influential Cardinals, Paulo Evaristo Arns, Archbishop of Sao Paulo, and Aloisio Lorscheider, Archbishop of Fortaleza, who accompanied Boff on his trip...
Boff's escort underlined the delicacy of the meeting, and perhaps even signaled to the Pope the need for compromise in dealing with the liberation theology issue. In Boff's case, the Vatican's concern was that if the friar took a defiant stand, he might gain further support from important elements of the Brazilian church, turning a disciplinary action into a no-retreat showdown...