CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (CNS): The Catholic Church in Nicaragua must educate the country's Catholic majority to recognise that politics is not about power, but about serving the common good, Pope Benedict XVI said.
At the papal villa in Castel Gandolfo on September 6, the Pope met with the bishops of Nicaragua, who were making their "ad limina" visits to report on the status of their dioceses.
He told them he was pleased with how they had shared the lot of the Nicaraguan people and "scrupulously respected" the obligation to stay out of partisan politics.
At the same time, the Pope said, they had worked to promote a climate of dialogue and calm in a situation of great political upheaval and efforts to build democracy.
Pope Benedict said the bishops had worked "to defend basic human rights, to denounce situations of injustice and to promote an understanding of politics that, more than being an ambition for power and control, is a generous and humble service of the common good".
He said charity, solidarity and education were key Church tasks in Nicaragua, a country marked by extreme poverty and often battered by natural disasters. Nearly 90 per cent of the 5 million inhabitants are Catholic.
He said the church in Nicaragua owed much to the lay catechists and the lay "delegates of the Word", who educated people in the faith and led prayer services when priests were not available to celebrate Mass.
Archbishop Leopoldo Brenes Solorzano of Managua told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, "The Church in Nicaragua is working so that the faithful feel that an essential part of their identity is to be missionaries, to be disciples of Christ and to preach, not only with their words, but also with their witness."