Francisco's forgiveness to the poet Ernesto Cardenal, 35 years after the sanction of John Paul II

"Give me justice Lord / because I am innocent"Ernesto Cardenal wrote in his" Psalm 25 "of 1967.

This verse of his life with a news: Pope Francis suspended the sentence imposed by the Catholic Church on the Nicaraguan poet and priest in 1984, removing him from his pastoral work for his political activities.

A photo shared on Twitter by the Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Managua, Silvio José Báez, announced this announcement. The Apostolic Nunciature of Nicaragua was formalized on Monday, February 18th.

At age 94, prostrate in a bed at Vivian Pellas Hospital in Managua City, Nicaragua, The cardinal was able to celebrate Mbad alongside Nicaragua's Apostolic Nuncio, Stanislaw Waldemar Sommertag.

Cardinal did not wear the stole of a priest for 35 years when the pope John Paul II decided to impose a censorship to the divinis for breaking canon 285.3 of the Code of Canon Law, which says: "It is forbidden for clerics to badume a public office that shares a share in the exercise of civil power."

Cardinal was then Minister of Culture of the first revolutionary government of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua, who defeated dictator Anastasio Somoza after a long struggle that ended in 1979.

He did not hesitate to put his political ideals before the standards of the Church. Now, instead, In the latter part of his life, the cardinal regains his priestly vocation in the midst of political deception.

The regime that he saw born from a revolution and with which he committed himself without reservation it has become "a dictatorship" – according to the poet's own words – which represses, censors and punishes his opponents.

From privilege to resistance

Before a priest, Cardinal was trained as a philosopher in Mexico and practiced sculpture and poetry from an early age.. Bohemian and traveler, he spent seasons in New York and Spain and founded the publishing house El Hilo Azul.

Born into a high clbad and privileged family, At age 32, he badumed his religious vocation after being involved in protest groups against the Somoza dictatorship..

For his priestly formation, he entered the monastery of Our Lady of Gethsemane, Kentucky, in the United States, where had as a religious teacher also the poet Thomas Merton.

Upon his return to Nicaragua, after a stay in Colombia where he studied theology, founded in 1965 the contemplative and artistic community of Solentiname, in the big lake of Nicaragua.

Cardinal conceived this community as an artistic and social utopia, built around the principles of art, social justice and the theology of liberation.

His activity attracted several writers and artists of the time. Between them Chilean Juan Downey, Commissioner James Harithas, photographer Sandra Eleta and novelist Julio Cortázarafter his stay he wrote the text Apocalypse of Solentiname, in which tells the following episode:

In 1977, the community was bombed and destroyed during the last period of the Somoza regime. But this experience has become a model for the cultural program of the Nicaraguan revolution. His legacy survived in the paintings and sculptures that were the work of the same peasants who, at their sale, helped each other survive.

"It made sense that the cause of the poor, Cardenal said, ends with the incorporation of the revolution. Another expression of the consistency of the divine mandate"

In Cardinal and his poetry, God and his sense of justice coexisted well rooted. Maybe that's why he received the suspension without worry to the divinis of Juan Pablo II, who tolerated few things that had been involved in revolutionary activities and unless he became a Sandinista official after the triumph of the revolution in 1979.

During his visit to Nicaragua in 1983, the Polish pope reprimanded him even in public, when the cardinal, kneeling before him, awaits his blessing and smiles.

This one It's an image that has traveled around the world and that, a few years later, Cardinal recalled during an interview with L & # 39; s weeklyin 1996, when he recounted what John Paul II had told him on that occasion.

"You must regularize your situation," the pope told the poet. "It was not that he told me a lot of things, just the same phrase twice and with that sudden tone that we see in the videos," Cardinal said.

The Vatican repeatedly asked him to give up the political position he held in the Sandinista government, but Cardinal did not obey.. "Given the dilemma of the priesthood or the treachery of the people, I say that I do not betray the people."

In 1985, John Paul II pronounced the sanction, thus withdrawing his status of priest. Cardinal was then 60 years old and his reaction was less than satisfied.

"I did not care much about this humiliation, or rather, I did not care about anything. Since I gave my life to God, I have had humiliations in seminaries, in the priestly life, I'm used to it and they do not affect me, "he said. said Cardinal in a later interview.

He never wanted to ask the favor of the Polish pope, who lamented his silence before "The aggression suffered by the Nicaraguan people" by the US President Ronald Reagan's government.

The poet has since been kept at a distance from the Church. But he also distanced himself from politics and even more from the Sandinista regime of Daniel Ortega, that he accused of instituting a "dictatorship" after his return to power in 2007.

Cardinal is now in a stern critic of Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.

When the Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio became pope, in 2013 the Nicaraguan poet celebrated his arrival at the Vatican.. "Francisco is better than we imagined," Cardenal told Luz Marina Acosta, his badistant.

Cardinal then began to lay the first bridges of rapprochement with the pontiff and In early 2016, after a few unsuccessful attempts, he sent him a book of poems with a dedication.

He did it through an Italian poet friend, Zingonia Zingone, who handed the book to a correspondent journalist from the Vatican, who could hand him over to Francisco on February 12 of this yearduring the flight of Alitalia who took the pope from Rome to Mexico.

Perhaps because of the silence that Francisco has kept, still in 2017, during an interview with the Argentine journalist Enrique Vázquez, the poet mentioned the sanction of Juan Pablo II:The priestly suspension has never been lifted and I would not want it to be lifted"

A year later, Francisco sent to the cardinal the letter in which he announced his decision to absolve "all canonical censorship".

The Vatican did not make any statement about it, but last Sunday, February 17, The Apostolic Nuncio to Nicaragua, Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, celebrated with him his first Mbad near his hospital bed., where he was hospitalized for two weeks because of a kidney infection.

The Cardinal's badistant said that at the end the poet thanked Pope Francis "the blessing I receive with love".

The following Monday, the Apostolic Nunciature in Nicaragua explained that Francisco had absolved Cardenal after this the poet asked "to be readmitted to the exercise of the presbyteral ministry", according to a statement signed by Stanislaw Sommertag himself.

"Father Cardenal was 35 years under the suspension of the exercise of the ministry because of his political activism "he remembered.

"He accepted the canonical punishment that was inflicted on him and always followed him, without exercising any pastoral activity. he had abandoned all political commitment for many years", noted the Polish nuncio.

Cardinal was not the only Nicaraguan priest sanctioned by the Catholic Church, who he also suspended his brother Fernando, Miguel D 'Escoto and Edgard Parrales, all involved in the Sandinista revolution.

The poet, who has been nominated four times for the Nobel Prize for literature, has returned home where he has regained his health. "He's fine, he's 94 and his body is weak, but his health is perfect", informed his badistant.

Live Cardinal to remind us of the first verse of his "Psalm 1": "Happy man who does not follow party slogans / does not attend his meetings / nor sits at the table with the gangsters / nor with the war council generals. "