Nicaragua a Cardinal Under Fire

By William R. Doerner

Shortly before fleeing into exile in 1979, Nicaraguan Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle erupted in fury over what he regarded as the complicity of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the Sandinista revolution. In particular, said Somoza, Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo of Managua should receive the new title of "Comandante Miguel." In fact, six years of increasingly harsh rule by the Marxist-oriented Sandinistas has brought Obando new prominence--and, indeed, notoriety. In 1985 Pope John Paul II elevated him to the College of Cardinals. He has emerged, in the eyes of Nicaragua's rulers, as their toughest critic. Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, himself a suspended Catholic priest, recently charged that Obando is "the principal accomplice of aggression against our people."

That accusation was the strongest yet in a deepening test of wills between Nicaragua's left-wing government, which besides d'Escoto includes two other Catholic priests of Cabinet rank,* and the country's mainline church, in which 85% of Nicaraguan citizens profess membership. In proclaiming a state of emergency that suspended most civil rights last October, President Daniel Ortega Saavedra cited as its principal cause the security threat posed by the U.S.-supported contra forces poised on Nicaragua's borders. But many Nicaraguans believe that the directive was largely aimed at curbing the power of the church. Obando labeled the decree a "step toward totalitarianism."

That stung the Sandinista leadership. It was a prescient observation. One of the government's first steps was to move in on a new church-sponsored group called the Justice and Peace Commission, whose aim was to defend human rights. Marta Patricia Baltodano, a lawyer and longtime human rights activist who helped organize the commission, asserts that she learned of a Sandinista plan to discredit her by forcing an accuser to claim falsely that she had engaged in sexual relations with a priest. Baltodano fled to exile in Costa Rica last December. "We realized we were not going to be able to continue working," she says. "There was too much repression."

The crackdown was in part aimed at Obando. Broadcasts of his sermons, which were yanked from government television six years ago, were banned in

January with the forced shutdown of Radio Catolica, the church station. The Sandinista emergency decree prevents anyone from holding unauthorized outdoor public gatherings, the setting that the Cardinal frequently chose for celebrating Mass in his travels through the countryside.

It is not difficult to see why the Sandinistas are so anxious to keep a tight rein on Obando. At a May Day Mass last week, the Cardinal used his homily to defend the right to strike, which was among the guarantees suspended in October. He warned sternly that "Marxism does not have the solution for the working class." In the past Obando has attacked Nicaragua's unpopular universal military draft and urged young men to enter seminaries as a way of avoiding it. He has urged the government to negotiate with the contra rebels and declined to condemn the Reagan Administration's effort to provide the guerrillas with $100 million in U.S. funding, a stand that prompted d'Escoto / to label the Cardinal a traitor.

Obando has drawn sharp criticism not only from radical priests in the government but also from their religious followers. A breakaway church faction, strongly influenced by Marxist-leaning "liberation theology," claims about 20 of Nicaragua's 327 priests and perhaps as many as 50,000 followers, including some members of Nicaragua's "base communities," mostly poor, urban religious groups without priests. The breakaways find the Cardinal's anti-Communism counterproductive and are put off by his insistence that the church, while obligated to take moral positions, must refrain from active political engagement. "The Catholic institution here is folkloric," says the Rev. Miguel Angel Casco, co-director of a pro-government religious think tank. "The revolution cannot make the new man without the church."

Rome has repeatedly placed its support behind Obando. But even without the Vatican's backing, it is doubtful that the Cardinal would turn to political activism. Born to Indian peasant parents in the south-central department of Chontales, he joined the Salesian order and became known as a priest to the poor, riding through rough country on horseback to visit impoverished backwoods villages. Though he has unquestionably gained stature in the course of his showdown with the Sandinistas, Obando remains a humble man, reluctant to venture far into the power game. "We, the bishops and the priests, shouldn't mix the church with party positions," he said last week in an interview with TIME. "It will divide the church. It is not our role."

In the increasingly tense political climate of Nicaragua, however, it is becoming more difficult to say what that role should be. Some Catholics urge the Cardinal to try harder to heal the Nicaraguan church's internal rift, which in turn might lessen tensions with the government. Others advise him to speak out against repression even more forcefully. Says Activist Exile Baltodano: "The government of Nicaragua is still sensitive to international pressure." Considering the irreconcilable forces at play, continued confrontation between Obando and the Sandinistas seems virtually inevitable.

FOOTNOTE: *The others: Culture Minister Ernesto Cardenal Martinez, also suspended from priestly duties, and his brother Fernando, Minister of Education, whose clerical status is under review.

With reporting by Laura Lopez/Managua