Pope Francis lifted the "suspension a divinis" to the priest and poet Ernesto Cardenal – 18/02/2019

The Vatican restored priestly office to Ernesto Cardenal, 94, suspended from a divinis by Pope John Paul II in 1984. to be part of the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, something forbidden by canon law who regulates the Church.

The news of the lifting of the suspension, which would a gesture of mercy Considering the deterioration of Cardinal's state of health and the fact that he has for years been disengaged from political activism activities, it was communicated to the priest by the Apostolic Nuncio to Nicaragua, Bishop Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag.

And this Monday the announcement of the nunciature was known.

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"The Holy Father graciously granted the absolution of all the canonical censures imposed by Reverend Father Ernesto Cardenal, welcoming the request that he has recently presented to him through the Pontifical Representative in Nicaragua in order to be readmitted to the exercise of the Presbyteral Ministry. "

Father Cardenal has been suspended for 35 years because of political activism, has accepted the canonical punishment imposed on him and has always followed it, without exercising any pastoral activity, for many years, any political commitment, concludes.

In your account Twitter, Bishop Silvio Báez, Auxiliary Bishop of Managua, published on February 15 a photo of the visit he made to the cardinal in the hospital where he is hospitalized.

"Today, I visited at the hospital my friend priest, Father Ernesto Cardenal, with whom I could converse a few minutes. After praying for him, I knelt in front of his bed and I asked for his blessing as a priest of the Catholic Church, to which he accepted with joy. Thank you Ernesto! ", Wrote Monsignor Báez.

Ernesto Cardenal has been hospitalized in a medical center in Managua since February 4 because of a kidney infection.

Ernesto Cardenal, with other priests like his brother Fernando, Miguel D Escoto and Edgard Parrales, were hanging on to divinis for making partisan politics.

Cardinal was publicly reprimanded by Saint John Paul II during his visit to Nicaragua in 1983. In the photo that went into the story, the serious Polish pope is seen in front of Nicaraguan in a position of genuflection and smiling.

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Cardinal, poet and activist of the theology of liberation, he will say later that on this occasion the Holy Father asked him to "regularize his situation".

Nicaraguan actively collaborated in the revolution of the Sandinista National Front of Liberation this put an end to the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. He was appointed Minister of Culture the same day that the Sandinistas won, on July 19, 1979. He held this position until 1987.

On January 19, 2017, Ernesto Cardenal, interviewed by the Argentine journalist Enrique Vázquez, declared that he did not wish to receive any grace: "They have never lifted my priestly suspension and I am not interested in being raised."

What is the suspension "A divinis"?

The suspension of A Divinis is a canonical sanction provided in canon 1333 of the Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church (established in the 1983 edition). The Latin phrase A divinis literally translates "divine ministries", but it is interpreted and applied as "Far from the divine". Suspension it is one of the traditional sanctions of the Church. It is between the censors, and unlike the other two censors (excommunication and prohibition) it can only be imposed on a cleric.

Suspension can be defined as medical sanction or censorship this prevents the cleric from exercising the ordinary power of order. The terminology A divinis today it has become obsolete using neither positive law, nor the code of canon law, nor the code of canons of the Eastern churches (Canon 1432).

Who is Ernesto Cardenal?

Born on January 20, 1925, in 1935, he entered the Jesuit School of Central America in Granada, where he studied at high school. He then studied philosophy and literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he graduated in 1947. Between 1948 and 1949 He did graduate work at Columbia University in New York. Disciple of José Coronel Urtecho, he joined the "Generation of 40" alongside poets Ernesto Mejía Sánchez and Carlos Martínez Rivas. He traveled across Europe and in 1950 he returned to Nicaragua. He began writing his historical poems and translating with North American poetry Coronel Urtecho, until forming a voluminous anthology.

In 1952 he founded an exclusive publishing house of its kind, The blue threadand In 1954 he participated in an armed movement to attack the presidential palace, known as the April rebellion. In 1956 he wrote his vast political poem Zero hour But this year has changed the meaning of his life: He decided to profess and entered the monastery of Our Lady of Gethsemani, Kentucky, USA, where Thomas Merton was his teacher and spiritual mentor. He continued his religious studies in Mexico and Colombia.

Ordained priest in Managua in 1965, traveled to the United States to plan the creation of a small contemplative commune in Nicaragua, which he founded the following year in the Solentiname archipelago. In 1970, he went to Cuba and told in the book his experience of the revolution of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. In Cuba. He also learned about the processes in Peru and Chile. In October 1977, when the first insurrectional offensive began, a group of young people participated as guerrillas Solentiname, who stormed the San Carlos barracks, for which the Somocista Guard destroyed their community and Cardinal was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment. In 1979, with the triumph of the Sandinista revolution, He was appointed Minister of Culture, a position he held until 1988.

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Ernesto Cardenal's work is both familiar and profoundly lyrical. His poetry, one of the most solid and recognizable in Latin America, is based on the legacy of American modernism (especially Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams), but with other influences such as popular culture or religious and scientific traditions, through a clear verse but with a important impact.

From the 70s, his poetry is radicalized and becomes above all an instrument of political action: National song (1972), Oracle on Managua (1973) Touch the sky (1981) and Cheap flights Victoria (1984).

Cardenal is one of Nicaragua's most prestigious authors. works translated into 20 languages ​​and recognitions such as the Order of the Legion of Honor in the official degree of the Government of France.

Last December, he received the Mario Benedetti International Prize, granted by Uruguay and dedicated to the Nicaraguan people and the teenager Álvaro Conrado, one of the first victims of protests against the government of President Daniel Ortega, it started last April.

Ibero-American Poetry Prize Pablo Neruda (2009) and Ibero-American Poetry Prize Reina Sofía (2012) They are among the most recent and important awards received by the Nicaraguan poet.

His confrontation with Daniel Ortega

A few months ago, Cardenal asked Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, his former companion of the revolution, who the "repression" against compatriots will cease protesting against their government, which killed at least 200 people.

"I demand that this repression suffered by our people be stopped immediately. For several months, we have had mbadacres all over the country and kidnappings, prisoners, torture."said the cardinal.

The message of the former Minister of Culture in the 1980s, after the Sandinista Revolution, allowed to see the Trappist priest nearly a year and a half later, at least on video, reiterate his criticism against the President and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.

"Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega (au) Nicaragua, it seems that they are owners", affirmed the cardinal.

Cardinal is well acquainted with the presidential couple because he participated in the fight against the dictatorship of Somoza and was militant until 1995 of the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), from which he is separated.

The poet's latest criticism concerned the 2018 attack on "combined" government forces against the town of Masaya, 29 kilometers northeast of Managua, which left at least 3 dead and 30 wounded.

"We now ask that this repression cease immediately," he insisted.

Poetic end

Whoever writes this note can not not remember Ernesto Cardenal. Who of our age, in his youth, did not appeal to Cardinal before a lost love?

And use his famous verses: "When I lost you, you and I lost, because you were what I loved most and you because I was the one who loved you the most, but of us two, you lose more than me, because I can love others How I loved you, but they will not like you like I liked you. "

EFE Agency, ACI Press and Biographies and Lives.