Sandinistas "Gagged and Bound" Us

Nicaragua:
by Miguel Cardinal Obando y Bravo
Miguel Cardinal Obando y Bravo was made Cardinal in 1985 by Pope John Paul
II. As Archbishop in charge of the largest archdiocese in Nicaragua, he is much
beloved by his fellow countrymen.
He was born in the Nicaraguan village of La Liberdad in 1927. He is the son of a
land surveyor, Antonio Obando and his wife Nicolasa. Miguel entered the
religious order of the Salisians of St. John Bosco. He was ordained a priest in
1958. He was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Matagalpa in 1968. In 1970 he was
made Archbishop of Managua.
The war against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua led by the Communists has
been going on for over seven years. The Communists have with the financial
resources of the Nicaraguan government, sought to set up another church
called the "popular church" which pretends to be the Catholic Church. It is this
front of the "popular church" which is used by the Communists to fight against
the Catholic Church. We should note that the Communists elsewhere have used
a similar tactic. For example, they have set up in China, as well as in the
Ukraine, other churches to supplant the One True Church, the Catholic Church.
Cardinal Obando y Bravo, already in 1982, pointed out in detail how the
Sandinistas tried to divide the Catholic Church. As Cardinal Obando said in print,
on August 14, 1982 in La Prensa in Managua regarding the Sandinistas, "For
them, there would be two churches: the revolutionary church identified with the
Marxists and the traditional or reactionary church that must be supplanted."
In the same interview, he pointed out, "Externally, the promoters of this
"popular church" have mounted vast international propaganda campaigns to
divulge the alleged accomplishments and goodness of the regime together with
the cooperation of Christians in the process."
This lie is promoted by "organs of liberation theology and akin religious groups
throughout the world."
Cardinal Obando opposed the excesses of the dictatorship which preceded the
Sandinistas and he now opposes the tyranny of the Communist Sandinistas who
today rule Nicaragua. The Sandinistas have persecuted the Catholic Church so
much so that Pope John Paul II on July 6, 1986, has publicly denounced the
Communist regime again.

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In April of this year, the Washington Post, "in an effort to illuminate the internal
Nicaraguan scene, while Congress is considering whether to resume military aid
to the Contras", asked Cardinal Obando y Bravo, Archbishop of Managua to
present his viewpoint. His words follow:
Your message asking me for an article arrived on Sunday, April 13th, just
as I finished celebrating Mass, and my first decision was not to grant your
request. I must not confuse my pastoral mission with others, however worthy,
such as politics or journalism, which are different from the mission that Our
Lord has entrusted to me. But, I am not obligated to keep silent either. As a
man, as a citizen, as a Christian, and even as a bishop, I have certain duties
that I must fulfill, and these duties compel me to grant your request.
In the Mass I just celebrated, I had to announce, with great sorrow, that
some of the offices of the Curia, occupied by the State Security Police since
October 1985, had been confiscated by government order, despite the fact that
they were built on land occupied by the Apostolic Nunciature.
In these offices there was a small printing press donated by the German
Bishops' Conference, which was used to print our bulletin Iglesia, a strictly
intra-ecclesiastical publication. Both the press and the bulletin were seized by
the State Security Police, along with all the files, including baptismal records
and my own personal seal.
During the Mass, I read the pastoral letter which we, the Bishops of
Nicaragua, had written for Holy Week. The pulpit was now our only means of
disseminating information, because the letter was totally censored and pulled
from the pages of the newspaper La Prensa, the only private newspaper in the
country, which attempted to publish it, but in vain. We believe that the reason
for the censorship was that for the second time we called all Nicaraguans to
reconciliation and dialogue as the only way to peace.
It was also announced that the Sunday bulletin with the prayers and texts
for the day would not be available because it was confiscated and that my
Sunday address would not appear in La Prensa, which, under the heading "The
Voice of Our Pastor," had been published for many years in that newspaper,
because it too had been censored, despite the special care taken to exclude
from it anything that could serve as the remotest excuse for censorship.
Radio Catolico, the only Catholic radio station, had been closed by the state
several months earlier. It was at this point, when the Church was gagged and
bound, that your request arrived.

To Speak As A Prophet

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The reading for the day, taken from the Acts of the Apostles, was about an
incident that pricked my conscience. The Sanhedrin sent for Peter and John,
intending to force them into silence. "But Peter and John said to them in reply:
'Is it right in God's eyes for us to obey you rather than God? Judge for
yourselves. We cannot possibly give up speaking of things we have seen and
heard'." (Acts 4:18-20).
I felt then that I ought to tell the truth and speak as a prophet speaks,
even at the risk of being a "voice that crieth in the wilderness." I would explain
to those that have ears to hear the sensitive situation of our Church and the
serious danger we place ourselves in simply by speaking out.
I am reminded of the incident related in the 22nd chapter of Matthew:
"Then the Pharisees went away and agreed on a plan to trap Him in His own
words." The method they chose was to appeal hypocritically to His spiritual
authority, saying: "Master, you are an honest man, we know; you teach in all
honesty the way of life that God requires . . . Give us your ruling on this: are we
or are we not permitted to pay taxes to the Roman emperor?" Jesus was aware
of their malicious intention and said to them: "You hypocrites! Why are you
trying to catch Me out?"
History repeats itself, and this is the situation of the Nicaraguan Bishops, a
situation that we denounced in our recent pastoral letter. An appeal is made to
our moral authority and to our position as spiritual leaders of the people. We
are asked to make a statement on an extremely sensitive political matter, but
the real objective is not to seek moral guidance, but rather to use our
statement to manipulate opinion.
If Jesus had answered that taxes should be paid to Caesar, He would have
become a collaborator of the occupying Roman imperialists. If He answered no,
He would have become a criminal and an agitator who violated the laws of the
land. If He had not answered at all, He would have lost His authority in the eyes
of the people.
We are asked to issue a statement against U.S. aid to the insurgents. The
state-controlled communications media, the organizations of the masses in the
service of the system and their allies in the so-called people's church and the
minister of Foreign Affairs, Fr. Miguel d'Escoto, are all clamoring for our
statement. But, as I mentioned, it is not moral guidance that is sought, since on
several occasions our Conference of Bishops has already stated that it was
against any outside interference, whether by the United States or the Soviet
Union. (Pastoral letter of April 22, 1984.) The intention is to use the statement
to manipulate.

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While no effort was spared in suppressing our earlier statements, this

statement would be given international publicity. Not for the faithful - but for
the U.S. Congress. But we are not pastors to the Congress of the United States.
If we were to support military aid to the insurgents, we would be
persecuted as traitors. If we opposed aid, we would be accused of taking sides,
which would automatically disqualify us as pastors to all of the people. If we
remain silent, our silence would be considered guilty, the silence of complicity.

"Rebels"
It can be argued that the U.S. Conference of Bishops has more than once
issued statements on political matters. But there is one big difference: the U.S.
Bishops' statements are made freely, they are addressed to their own people,
and their purpose is to provide moral guidance. They can make such statements
in complete freedom, and they can give their reasons, with full access to the
communications media. Their words are not censored, twisted, or distorted. But
above all, their statements do not make them criminals and traitors to their
country.
In Nicaragua any dissident from the Sandinista cause can be placed outside
the law through an ingenious distortion of the truth:
The government, with all the media under its control, has taken great
pains to convince the outside world that what is happening is essentially a direct
attack by the United States on our country. That there is a war, open or covert,
between the two countries, and, consequently, any form of assistance to the
enemy, whether material or moral, is punishable by law.
Along the same lines, and with equal insistence, it rejects both the idea
that an East-West conflict has made of our country a disposable card, a pawn in
the game between the superpowers, and the reality of a civil war: an enormous
number of Nicaraguans oppose with all their might the turn taken by a
revolution that has betrayed the hopes of the Nicaraguan people and even its
own promises.
To accept the reality of an East-West conflict would be to admit that the
Sandinistas are just as much the tools of Soviet interests as the insurgent
forces are of the United States. If this is accepted, aid from the one is equally
as deplorable as aid from the other. It would necessitate the withdrawal of the
Soviet and Cuban advisers, as well as the withdrawal of all U.S. military aid.
If the reality of an internal conflict between Nicaraguans is admitted, the
conclusion could not be avoided that the insurgent dissidents are now in the
same position that the Sandinistas themselves once occupied, and,
consequently, that they have the same right that the Sandinistas had to seek
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aid from other nations, which they in fact did request and obtain in order to
fight a terrible dictatorship.
To accept this would mean giving the insurgents the title of "rebels," a title
that the Sandinistas proudly gave to themselves in former days.
The only possible argument against this is that unlike the Somozan
dictatorship, which the Nicaraguan people fought almost unanimously, this is a
democratic government, legitimately constituted, which places the interests of
the Nicaraguan people above any ideological struggle or international cause,
seeks the welfare and peace of the people and enjoys the support of an
overwhelming majority.
Unfortunately, this is not true either. To accept this as the indisputable
truth is to ignore the mass exodus of the Miskito Indians, who, on numerous
occasions, fled in the thousands, accompanied by their Bishop, Salvador
Schlaeffer. It is also to ignore the departure of tens of thousands of Nicaraguan
men and women of every age, profession, economic status, and political
persuasion. It is to ignore that many of those who are leaders or participants in
the counter-revolution were once leaders or members of the Sandinista front or
were ministers in the Sandinista government.
It is to ignore the lack of any justification for the most terrible violation of
freedom of the press and of speech in the history of our country. It is to ignore
the progressive and suffocating restriction of public liberties, under the cover of
an interminable national emergency law and the continual violation of human
rights. It is to ignore the expulsion of priests and the mass exodus of young
people eligible for military service ... None of this is true of a government that
has the sympathy and general support of the people.

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Cardinal Obando during pastoral visit to Jinotega, Aug. 25,

1985, riding on a mule like he used to do in 1968-70 when
he was Auxiliary Bishop of Matagalpa.

The Only Real Solution

And this is what the Nicaraguan Bishops wish to state:
"It is urgent and essential that the Nicaraguan people, free of foreign
interference or ideologies, find a way out of the situation of conflict that our
country is experiencing.
"We reaffirm today, with renewed emphasis, what we said in our pastoral
letter on Easter Sunday, April 22, 1984:
"'Foreign powers are taking advantage of our situation to promote
economic and ideological exploitation. They view us as adjuncts to their
own power, without respect for our persons, our history, our culture,
and our right to determine our own destiny.'
"Consequently, most of the Nicaraguan people live in fear and are
uncertain about the future. They feel deeply frustrated. They cry out for peace
and freedom, but their voices go unheard, drowned out by militaristic
propaganda on every side.
"We feel that any form of assistance, regardless of the source, which
causes the destruction, suffering, and death of our families, or which sows
hatred and discord among the Nicaraguan people is reprehensible. To choose

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annihilation of the enemy as the only possible way to peace is inevitably to

choose war."
The Church proposes reconciliation through dialogue as the only real
solution, the only way to peace, and maintains, in the words of His Holiness
John Paul II, in his visit to El Salvador in March, 1983, that this dialogue ". . . is
not a delaying tactic to strengthen positions prior to continuing a fight, but
rather a sincere effort to respond, by seeking appropriate solutions to the
anxiety, the pain, the weariness, and the fatigue of the many who yearn for
peace. The many who wish to live, to rise again from the ashes, to seek warmth
in the smiles of children, free from terror and in a climate of democratic
cooperation."
This is the text that was censored by the Sandinista government.
We are asked to issue a statement against aid, the Church and the position
of our Conference of Bishops, which is trying to guide the Church through
turbulent waters, more by the spirit than by the natural sciences and politics of
man, which do not seem to hold any solution for such difficult problems. We are
in a difficult situation, but we place our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus, the
Prince of Peace and the Lord of History.

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