The Jesuit Order Banned In Nicaragua

Society Of Jesus Banned In Nicaragua

By David Agren

Published

2 days ago

A Nicaraguan exiled in Costa Rica holds up a sign reading: "Ortega and Murillo Out! #SOSNicaragua" during the "Vigil of Faith and Freedom" outside the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Jose, Costa Rica, Aug. 19, 2022, to protest against the detention of Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa, by Nicaraguan authorities. The Nicaraguan regime extinguished the Jesuits' legal status Aug. 23, 2023, and said it will expropriate its assets, effectively making it illegal for the Society of Jesus to operate in the Central American country. (OSV News photo/Mayela Lopez, Reuters)


MEXICO CITY (OSV News) — The Nicaraguan regime has extinguished the Jesuits’ legal status and ordered the expropriation of its assets, effectively making it illegal for the Society of Jesus to operate in the Central American country.

The legal cancellation of the Jesuits on Aug. 23 follows the confiscation of the Jesuit-run Central American University a week earlier, with authorities accusing the school of hosting a “center of terrorism” and seizing its campus in the capital city of Managua.

The Jesuit province in Central America condemned the cancellation, saying in an Aug. 23 statement that this is part of a government policy of systematic repression that violates human rights and appears “to be aimed at consolidating a totalitarian state.”

“The decision was made without the record that the administrative procedures established by law have been carried out,” the statement continued.

“We hold the president and the vice president of Nicaragua responsible for, at least, endorsing these facts and preventing the existence of conditions of judicial independence and neutrality that would allow measures to stop, reverse and sanction them.”

The Nicaraguan interior ministry accused the Jesuits of lacking the proper oversight for a non-governmental group and failing to file tax information with the government between 2020 and 2022. The status of non-citizen Jesuits remains uncertain as the order would lack the legal standing to sponsor their immigration visas.

The cancellation of the Jesuits’ legal status in Nicaragua culminates a campaign of hostilities against the order and what had been its best-known project in the country, the Central American University.

The university was seized from the Jesuits, but recently reopened with a new name (Universidad Nacional Casimiro Sotelo Montenegro), a leadership team considered close with the regime, and the ruling Sandinista party’s black and red flag flying over the campus.

Six Jesuits affiliated with the Central America University were subsequently evicted from their home Aug. 21, even though they showed a title proving the property did not belong to the university. Other Jesuit projects in Nicaragua include Fe y Alegría educational centers, which serve more than 55,000 students, along with programs for farmers and people with disabilities.

The university came into conflict with the regime of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, after students participated in protests calling for Ortega’s ouster in 2018 and school officials opened the campus to wounded protesters fleeing police and paramilitaries.

School officials and students later participated in a national dialogue facilitated by the Nicaraguan bishops’ conference to find an exit to the national crisis — but the bishops later withdrew, alleging bad faith on the government side.

“The University was the last bastion of freedom” in Nicaragua, Enrique Pumar, a sociology professor at the Jesuit-run University of Santa Clara, told OSV News.

He described the relationship between the Jesuits and the ruling Sandinistas, who first took power in a 1979 revolution, as “love-hate.” Some Jesuits eagerly backed the Sandinistas and even served in government, but many in the order and the Catholic Church “supported more gradual change” than Ortega, according to Pumar.

The Ortega-Murillo regime has cracked down on the Catholic Church over the past five years, harassing, imprisoning and expelling priests for accompanying the families of political prisoners and speaking out against gross violations of human rights.

Bishop Rolando Álvarez remains imprisoned on a 26-year sentence, which was handed down after he refused to join 222 political prisoners sent into exile and stripped of their citizenship in February.

The regime has canceled, banned and expelled other religious orders, including Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in 2022 — raising similar, unproven accusations of internal misgovernance. More than 3,000 non-governmental groups in Nicaragua have lost their legal status.

David Agren writes for OSV News from Mexico City.

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Pope Rehabilitates Marxist Priest

Cliff Kincaid — August 4, 2014





An advocate of Marxist-oriented “liberation theology” and recipient of a Lenin Peace Prize has returned to his duties as a priest in the Roman Catholic Church, after a 29-year suspension.

Miguel D’Escoto, who served as President of the U.N. General Assembly from September 2008 until September 2009, had been suspended from his priestly functions by the anti-communist Pope John Paul II in 1985. D’Escoto had joined the communist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua as foreign minister, after which the Soviets recognized his service by giving him the International Lenin Peace Prize.

His reinstatement is another sign of the leftward drift of the papacy of Pope Francis, a worldwide media favorite, who recently said, “I can only say that the communists have stolen our flag,” because the Marxists claim to be concerned about the poor.

In a “Dear Brother President Barack Obama” letter, dated August 25, 2013, D’Escoto declared that U.S. foreign policy was being guided by Satan and constituted “terrorist, murderous and genocidal U.S. imperialism.” He urged Obama to have “the courage to acknowledge also that capitalism is, in fact, the most un-Christian doctrine and practice ever devised by man to keep us separate and unequal in a kind of global apartheid.”

An August 1 statement on his complete reintegration into the Roman Catholic Church, carried by Christian News Wire, said, “The Holy Father has given His benevolent assent that Father Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann be absolved from the canonical censure inflicted upon him, and entrusts him to the Superior General of the Institute [Maryknoll] for the purpose of accompanying him in the process of reintegration into the Ministerial Priesthood.”

This controversial decision, which is certain to anger conservative Catholics, means that the pope has given a stamp of approval to D’Escoto resuming his priestly duties, including celebrating Mass and providing communion with Christ.

Mike Virgintino, communications manager at The Maryknoll Society, confirmed to Accuracy in Media that the ruling means that Pope Francis personally approved the return of D’Escoto to the priesthood. He said D’Escoto had approached the Vatican directly.

D’Escoto graduated with a Master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism in 1962. He was born in 1933 in Los Angeles, California.

D’Escoto emerged as not only a strong critic of U.S. foreign policy, but is outspokenly critical of Israel’s role in the Middle East. He became a favorite of the Al Jazeera propaganda channel for urging the expulsion of Israel from the U.N.

In January 2009, Al Jazeera highlighted his accusation that Israel was guilty of “genocide” against Palestinians.

One senior UN official said, “I cannot remember any Assembly president so publicly vocal in denouncing Israel.”

The decision to bring D’Escoto back into good standing in the Roman Catholic Church sends a strong message worldwide about the direction of the papacy, but it has received surprisingly little media attention so far.

In March, the Pew Research Journalism Project reported that “One year into Francis’ papacy, an analysis by the Pew Research Center finds that the former Jesuit archbishop—who was named Time’s Person of the Year—ranked among the top global newsmakers in major U.S.-based digital news outlets.”

In recent months the pope has used his popularity and media notoriety to criticize capitalism, make overtures to Islam and entertain Russia’s Vladimir Putin at the Vatican.

Jeanine Pirro, host of the Fox News Channel’s “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” recently criticized Pope Francis for “failing to take action on behalf of Christians in the Middle East.” She said, “I’m a Christian. I’m a Catholic…I mean no disrespect but it is time for the papacy, and Pope Francis in particular, to start protecting his Christian flock.”

Despite communism’s record of atheism and persecution of Christians, D’Escoto’s service to various communist causes goes back decades.

The website of “World Citizens for Peace” reports that after the death of former President Ronald Reagan in 2004, D’Escoto told Pacifica Radio that he prayed that God forgive Reagan “for having been the butcher of my people, for having been responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 Nicaraguans…crimes he committed in the name of what he falsely labeled freedom and democracy.”

In fact, Reagan supported Nicaraguan freedom fighters trying to bring democracy to the country. These efforts resulted in free elections deposing the Sandinistas from power.

D’Escoto is also a supporter of the “green” movement. As we reported in 2009, he gave a speech as president of the U.N. General Assembly in which he declared that “There is a growing awareness that we are all sons and daughters of Earth and that we belong to her.” He urged “a planetary civilization” that is “more respectful of Mother Earth, more inclusive of all people and with more solidarity with the poorest, which is more spiritual and full of reverence for the splendor of the universe and which is much happier.”

The official press release about the lifting of the suspension mentioned that D’Escoto had once served as an official with the World Council of Churches (WCC). Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, who worked on KGB operations as head of Romanian intelligence, described the WCC as a Kremlin pawn infiltrated by the KGB.

The communist-dominated religious body was the subject of a January 23, 1983, CBS “60 Minutes” broadcast entitled, “The Gospel According to Whom?” As AIM noted at the time, the program exposed the Marxist orientation of the WCC and even its funding of terrorists.

Despite being banned from priestly functions, D’Escoto has remained a member of the Maryknoll Society, with residence in Nicaragua.

The Sandinistas have returned to power in Nicaragua, with President Daniel Ortega having met on July 12 with Vladimir Putin, after the Russian leader decided to make a “surprise visit” to the Central American country. Ortega said, “It is like a ray of light, like a flash of lightning. This is the first time a Russian president has visited Nicaragua.”


Source
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The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church

Liberation Theology was the perfect blueprint for the Sandinistas. It incorporated the very aim of Marxist-Leninism. It presumed the classic Marxist "struggle of the masses" to be free from all capitalist domination. And above all, the Marxist baby was at last wrapped in the very swaddling clothes of ancient [Roman] Catholic terminology.

From
THE JESUITS


The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church

by

Malachi Martin

["Father" Martin, a prolific RC author, was a long time Jesuit and remains a Roman Catholic in good standing. JP ]

Published by Simon & Schuster, NY

ISBN: 0-671-54505-1

page 56-62 . . .

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THE TESTING GROUND

. . . by the early seventies, at least seven years before their grab for power, the Sandinista leaders openly proclaimed their ultimate aim: to create a Marxist society in Nicaragua to serve as the womb from which Marxist revolution throughout Central America would be born. "Revolution throughout the Americas" was the slogan.

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From their beginnings as a group, when they were nothing more than rag-tag guerrillas, bank robbers, and hit-and-run terrorists, the Sandinistas understood full well that they had no hope of installing a Marxist regime in 91.6 percent Roman Catholic Nicaragua unless they could enlist - in effect, inhale - the active cooperation of the Catholic clergy, together with suitably altered [Roman Catholic] Church doctrine and [Roman Catholic] Church structure.

Mere passive connivance on the part of the clergy would not be enough. If the Sandinistas wanted the very soul of the people, they knew the road: [Roman] Catholicism was inextricably bound up in the warp and woof of Nicaraguan culture, language, way of thinking, and outlook, and was integral to all the hope of the people.

Here, Fernando Cardenal, as [Roman Catholic] priest and Jesuit,
was a towering influence.

For some time, certain [Roman] Catholic theologians in Latin America - principally Jesuits of the post-World War II period - had been developing a new theology. They called it the Theology of Liberation, and based it on the theories of their European counterparts.

It was an elaborate and carefully worked out system, but its core principle is very simple: The whole and only meaning of Christianity as a religion comes down to one achievement - the liberation of men and women, by armed and violent revolution if necessary, from the economic, social, and political slavery imposed on them by U.S. capitalism; this is to be followed by the establishment of "democratic socialism."

In this "theological" system, the so-called "option" for the economically poor and the politically oppressed, originally described as a "preferential" option by Catholic bishops in Latin America at their conference in Medellin, Colombia, in 1968, became totally exclusive: There was one enemy - capitalist classes, middle and upper and lower, chiefly located in the United States. Only the "proletariat" - the "people" - was to be fomented by the imposition of Marxism.

Liberation Theology was the perfect blueprint for the Sandinistas.

It incorporated the very aim of Marxist-Leninism. It presumed the classic Marxist "struggle of the masses" to be free from all capitalist domination. And above all, the Marxist baby was at last wrapped in the very swaddling clothes of ancient Catholic terminology. Words and phrases laden with meaning for the people were co-opted and turned upside down.

The historical Jesus, for example, became an armed revolutionary. The mystical Christ became all the oppressed people, collectively. Mary the Virgin became the mother of all revolutionary heroes. The Eucharist became the bread freely made by liberated workers. Hell became the capitalist system. The American president, leader of the greatest capitalist country, became the Great Satan. Heaven became the earthly paradise of the workers from which capitalism is abolished. Justice became the uprooting of capitalist gains, which would be "returned" to the people, to the "mystical body" of Christ, the democratic socialists of Nicaragua. The Church became that mystical body, "the people," deciding its fate and determining how to worship, pray, and live, under the guidance of Marxist leaders.

It was a brilliant synthesis, ready-made and just waiting for the activists who would set about erecting a new sociopolitical structure on its basis, as a building rises from a blueprint.

The Nicaraguan people were the first guinea pigs on whom the theory was experimentally tried. And the priests who were charter members in the Sandinista leadership - Jesuit Fernando Cardenal Ernesto Cardenal, Miguel D'Escoto Brockman of the Maryknoll Fathers, Jesuit Alvaro Arguello, Edgar Parrales of the Managua diocese - made the experiment doubly blessed and likely to succeed.

If such men, duly ordained as priests, could successfully get this new "theological" message across - that the Sandinista revolution was really a religious matter sanctioned by legitimate Church spokesmen - they would have both the [Roman] Catholic clergy and the people as allies in a Marxist-style revolution by armed violence.

[no R. C. was ever excommunicated for engaging in violent revolution ..... JP ]

Without a doubt, the plan had been carefully thought out and elaborated, based on a profound analysis of the Nicaraguan people and of its clergy.

No doubt, too, the first connivers in the scheme were the priests themselves; there are even those in Managua today and among prominent Nicaraguan exiles in Panama, Honduras, and Miami, Florida,who point the finger at Fernando Cardenal as the prime architect of the scheme. But what evidence there is does suggest that he was not the only Jesuit involved.

In any case, the Sandinista undertaking was ever more brilliantly explained, refined, and dinned into the ears of seminarians, nuns, university students, and the popular mind by increasing numbers of their Jesuit, Franciscan, and Maryknoll teachers and lecturers throughout the schools of Central America. The seeding time was well spent in the view of ultimate Marxisation. The pathetic court testimony of the young Nicaraguan Edgard Lang Sacasa told the world as far back as 1977 that it had been his priest educators who had persuaded him and thousands like him to join the Sandinista guerrillas.

Hand in hand with this new Theology of Liberation went, of necessity, the establishment of a new and "pliant" Church structure to replace the old one.

In the traditional Roman Catholic structure, knowledge about God, Christ, Christian salvation, personal morality, and human destiny derived from the hierarchic pastors of the Church - namely, the Pope and his bishops.

They were the only authentic source of knowledge about the faith; apart from them, there was no accurate knowing possible about Christianity. Submission to them and acceptance of their teaching and laws were necessary for salvation.

It was precisely this structure, in which ultimate control is Rome's, that stood between the Sandinistas and the people. And it was precisely this structure that the earlier, European-based architect-theologians of Liberation Theology had criticized. This structure was, Liberation Theologians said, dictated by "a view from above" and "imposed from above" on the people "below."

Franciscan Liberation Theologian Leonardo Boff, teaching in a Brazilian seminary, put it in terms Fernando Cardenal and his clerical colleagues could champion: "There has been a historical process of expropriation of the means of production on the part of the clergy to the detriment of the Christian People." Boff was not talking about industry or commerce, but about theology and religious doctrine; the means of production - the "plant," as he called it - was the preaching of the Gospel.

Tccording to the new theologians, "Roman" and therefore "alien" imposition of religious doctrine was the very reason social injustice and political oppression flourished in lands where this hierarchic [Roman Catholic] Church flourished. In lands such as Latin American countries. In countries such as Nicaragua. On top of that, the argument went on, Christianity and specifically [Roman] Catholicism was not merely alien in and of itself, but had always accompanied actual invasion by alien European cultures. "Alien" - that was the key word.

To counter that alien, imposed structure, the new theologians looked "from below." From the level of the people. From the perspective of oppression and injustice - because that, they said, was all they found "below" among the people. The task, in other words, was to impose the "preferential option" on all the people, rich and poor alike. Immediately, as Fernando Cardenal and the other Sandinista priests quickly realized, a new concept of "Church" was born.

The ordinary body of believers, by revised definition, would become the very source of revelation. The faith of believers would "create" communities among those believers. Base Communities, they are called in Nicaragua and elsewhere in Latin America - "comunidades de base" . And those Communities taken together would form the new "Church," the "People's Church."

These Communities began to form years before the Nicaraguan revolution stormed onto the stage of geopolitics in 1979. Groupings of laymen and laywomen would gather regularly to pray, to read the Bible, to sing hymns, to discuss their local concrete problems in economics and politics; to choose not only their political leaders but their priests as well; and to determine not only the solutions to their secular problems, but how best to worship and what to believe.

It was a dream come true. A dream put into clear words by the same Father Boff: "The sacred power must be put back in the hands of the people." No teaching or directing authority would be allowed "from above," from the alien, hierarchic [Roman Catholic] Church. In fact, the very symbols of that Church must be firmly rejected.

Symbols and all else must only come "from below." From the people. From their Base Communities - nearly 1000 of them in Nicaragua alone, in time; and nearly 300,000 in Latin America at large. The idea of Base Communities spread to the United States, where they are sometimes called "Gatherings."

Fernando Cardenal, Ernesto Cardenal, Miguel D'Escoto Brockman, Edgar Parrales, and Alvaro Arguello were the showcase priests of the Sandinistas, the intended and willing legitimizers of this new "People's Church" that would appropriate



Source: http://www.starharbor.com/fr_martin/jesuits.html