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Ernesto Cardenal

Ernesto Cardenal (20 January 1925-1 March 2020) was a Nicaraguan Catholic priest who served as Nicaragua's Minister of Culture from 1979 to 1987 as a member of the Sandinistas.

Biography[]

Ernesto Cardenal was born in Granada, Nicaragua to an upper-class family (the brother of Fernando Cardenal), and he participated in the failed 1954 revolution against Anastasio Somoza Garcia's right-wing dictatorship. He went on to study theology in the United States, and he became a Catholic priest in 1965. He founded a Christian peasant community on the Solentiname Islands, and, during the Nicaraguan Revolution, he and his community closely cooperated with the Sandinistas against Anastasio Somoza Debayle's regime. He served as Minister of Culture from 1979 to 1987, but his ministry was closed in 1987 for economic reasons, and he left the Sandinistas in 1994 as they became more authoritarian. In 1984, Pope John Paul II prohibited him from administering the sacraments, but he was rehabilitated by Pope Francis in 2019. He died in Managua in 2020 at the age of 95.

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