Fr Fernando Cardenal SJ, who died on 20 February at the age of 82, devoted his life to the cause of universal education in Nicaragua. Born to a wealthy family in the Nicaraguan town of Granada, he later described his wild youth, which he eventually found unsatisfying. After a retreat he decided to join the Jesuits. He first encountered poverty during the nine months he spent in a poor neighbourhood of Medellín, Colombia, as part of his novitiate: “The children were eating scraps from our rubbish,” he said. He returned to Nicaragua a changed man. Fernando Cardenal joined the Sandinista revolution against the dictatorship of Antonio Somoza in 1973, six years before the revolution triumphed in 1979. Under the new government, he organised thousands of volunteers in a liter