Religion and Politics

Fernando Cardenal, Nicaraguan Priest Who Defied Pope, Dies at 82

At The New York Times, Sam Roberts reports, “The Rev. Fernando Cardenal, a son of privilege who embraced Latin America’s poor as a revolutionary priest and brazenly defied Pope John Paul II’s order to quit Nicaragua’s leftist cabinet in the 1980s, died on Saturday in Managua.” Cardenal, 82, served as the education minister for the Sandinista National Liberation Front and is credited with reducing illiteracy in the country from 51 to 13 percent. “If some government has no interest in respecting the inalienable rights to a quality education to which every child that is born in their country is entitled, it should at least do it out of fear for its own safety,” Cardenal wrote in 2010.

Read at The New York Times

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