Pope Francis has lifted the suspension of a Nicaraguan priest imposed in the 1980s after he refused to give up his position in the country’s leftist revolutionary government.
Fr Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, 81, who ignored numerous instructions from St John Paul II to resign as Foreign Minister in the country’s Sandinista Government, said he wanted to be able to celebrate Mass again “before dying”.
The Code of Canon Law prohibits priests from holding partisan political office. In 1985 Fr D’Escoto and two Sandinista colleagues, Fr Fernando Cardenal SJ, the Education Minister, and his brother, Fr Ernesto Cardenal, the Culture Minister, were suspended by the Vatican. D’Escoto remained Foreign Minister until 1990.
But 29 years on, Francis revoked the order after D’Escoto, a Maryknoll father, formally requested permission to resume his priestly duties.
The Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers said in a statement: “The Holy Father has given his benevolent assent that Fr 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.”
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