Catholic Phoenix

 (Note to Arizona’s  Governor Brewer: if you really want to put the public smack down, it helps if you can get the other guy on his knees first.) 

The photograph depicts the famous Managua airport encounter between Fr. Ernesto Cardenal and John Paul the Great, upon the arrival of the Pope for his 1983 pastoral visit to Nicaragua, then under the revolutionary Marxist dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas.  Cardenal, ordained a priest in the 1960s, was already well-known throughout Latin America as a poet, wandering liberation theologian, and leader of an “artists’ commune” when the Sandinistas overthrew the ugly Somoza regime in 1979; he accepted the government’s offer to become Minister of Culture, a post he held until the late 1980s. 

Cardenal had been ordered by his bishop, who was relaying orders from Rome, to resign his governmental office, it being inconsistent with the obligations of holy orders for a priest of the Church to serve in such a capacity.  Cardenal of course insisted that serving the revolution was the true fulfillment of his priestly duties, and his refusal became a public scandal.

When the Pope approached the official welcoming delegation at the airport, Minister Cardenal dropped to his knees and asked for a blessing.  What he got instead was the famous, finger-wagging admonition: “You must regularize your position with the Church!  Regularize your position with the Church!”  Cardenal is reported to have answered “Yes, Holy Father”–which I suppose is what you always say to the Vicar of Christ, even if you have no intention of obeying him.

Cardenal remained the Sandinista Minister of Culture, was eventually suspended from the priesthood, and then later broke with the Sandinistas because of what he saw as the “inauthenticity” of their revolution.   He still writes poetry and accepts invitations to deliver lectures at American Jesuit universities, where he presumably tells his audiences that the only “authentic” revolution is repentance and conversion. (?)

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