The next problem involved the priests in the government, who had persistently refused their religious superiors’ orders to leave political office. Montezemolo told Daniel Ortega that the Pope wanted this business of the priests in government “settled.” Ortega replied that “it’s a matter of conscience for them; it’s not my affair.” He then asked what would happen if Fathers D’Escoto and Cardenal were present at, say, the welcoming ceremony at the airport. The nuncio replied that it was possible that the Pope would not greet them, because they were in open disobedience. Ortega seemed uneasy with this, and Montezemolo went off to see the foreign minister, Miguel D’Escoto.
The portly Maryknoll priest was angry and abusive, insisting that “I am the foreign minister of Nicaragua, I must see the Pope, I must travel with the Pope.” Montezemolo replied that he was sorry, the Pope never traveled with political figures on his pilgrimages. D’Escoto was enraged. On their way out of the foreign ministry, Montezemolo’s second-in-command muttered, “Tomorrow, either the foreign minister or the nuncio will be gone.”
Montezemolo then went to see Father Cardenal. At their first meeting in 1980, the nuncio had been struck by Cardenal’s tiled office in a rather peculiar building, which turned out to be one of the old Somoza family palaces; Father Cardenal, who impressed Montezemolo as spiritually intense but “very abstract,” even disconnected, had explained without blinking, “Oh, this was the bathroom of Mrs. Somoza.” After Montezemolo laid out the situation with the papal visit, Cardenal replied, “But I have to be present, the regime and Daniel Ortega want me there.” The nuncio answered that he had just seen Commandante Ortega, who had told him that this was a matter of Cardenal’s conscience and not Ortega’s affair. Cardenal would not budge.
So the question of Ernesto Cardenal meeting the Pope remained unresolved for the moment. Ortega, however, fearful of an embarrassing incident in front of the international press, took care of the volatile D’Escoto. Some days after their meeting, he called Archbishop Montezemolo and said, “Comrade Nuncio, I forgot to tell you the other day that when the Pope is here there is an important international meeting in India to which I must send the foreign minister.”44
Archbishop Montezemolo was not the only Vatican official having difficulties arranging things in Nicaragua. Father Roberto Tucci, SJ, the chief organizer of the Pope’s pilgrimages, was so exasperated at Sandinista troublemaking in late 1982 that he advised John Paul that they would be better off threatening not to go unless the regime accepted some basic conditions, including free access to the sites the Pope would visit and Church control of the organization of the papal Mass in Managua. John Paul, determined to get to Nicaragua and encourage what he regarded as a persecuted Church, told Tucci that he wanted the visit to go through, even if it might be difficult.45
Finally, John Paul II arrived in Managua on March 4, 1983. When the papal plane landed, the entire Sandinista government was lined up on the runway, waiting to greet the Pope. Archbishop Montezemolo went up the gang-way with the government chief of protocol, and was met at the door of the plane by Cardinal Casaroli, who took the nuncio aside and asked, “Are any of the priests in the government attending?” Montezemolo took the Secretary of State to one of the plane’s windows, pointed to the government receiving line, and said, “Look, Ernesto Cardenal is there, but D’Escoto isn’t.” Casaroli replied, “We have to tell the Pope,” so they went to the forward compartment where John Paul was still seated and showed him Father Cardenal from the window. The Pope asked the nuncio what he should do. Montezemolo replied, “Holy Father, it’s not for me to give you instructions, but if you don’t greet him, they’re prepared for that.” John Paul said, “No, I want to greet him, but I have something to tell him.”
After the welcoming speeches, Daniel Ortega led the Pope toward the members of the government, with Montezemolo walking at the Pope’s left. A few yards from the receiving line, Ortega, nervous about the whole business, said to John Paul, “We don’t have to greet them, we can just pass by over here.” The Pope replied, “No, I want to greet them.” Ortega then led the Pope down the line. When they got to Ernesto Cardenal, the minister of culture swept off his beret and genuflected. Gesturing vigorously toward the priest with his right hand, John Paul said, in a warm and friendly voice, “Regularize your position with the Church. Regularize your position with the Church.” It was not, as the nuncio recalled it, a reproach, but an invitation.*
The major confrontation came later that morning at the papal Mass in Managua. The Mass venue, a local park, had been one of the controversial issues in the pre-visit negotiations. Montezemolo had suggested putting the temporary stage for the altar at the other end of the park from the permanent stage used for Sandinista rallies, which was decorated with huge posters of César Augusto Sandino, Marx, Lenin, and other revolutionary heroes. Commandante Ortega had said, “No, we can’t do that, but we’ll arrange things in the right way.” Some days later, Montezemolo noticed that the giant posters had been taken down and thought, “Well, that’s cooperation.” He later discovered that they’d been taken down to be repainted before being reinstalled. When he mentioned this to the Pope, John Paul replied, “Don’t worry, when I’m up there with all the bishops, nobody will be looking at the posters.”47 As things turned out, the regime had far more disruptive plans for manipulating the event.
Father Tucci had arrived in Managua a few days before the Pope’s arrival, along with Piervincenzo Giudici, a senior Vatican Radio engineer and an expert in sound systems. Giudici had gone to check the papal Mass site and came back shocked. A second sound system—new, powerful, and independently controlled—had been installed. Archbishop Montezemolo asked the government what was going on and received the bland reply, “Oh, we want to be prepared for an emergency.”
In the pre-visit negotiations, Montezemolo had insisted that the park be divided into sections and that the sector in front of the altar be reserved for representatives of Catholic associations and movements. When these representatives arrived at the site at 4 A.M., they discovered that the central front section had already been packed with Sandinista supporters, as had virtually all the space near the altar. The people for whom the Mass was being celebrated were corralled far to the rear of the venue, and police fired automatic weapons over the heads of those who tried to get closer to the altar.48
Just beside the papal altar was another platform, filled with members of the government and senior Sandinista Party members. Their behavior was less than devout. During the Mass, all nine members of the Sandinista National Directorate, including Daniel Ortega, waved their left fists and shouted “People’s Power!”49 The confrontation became most dramatic during the Pope’s sermon. The Sandinistas had secreted microphones into the sector immediately in front of the altar platform, now full of their supporters. Those microphones and the microphones on the altar platform were controlled by Sandinista engineers, using the “emergency” sound system that had been installed days before. At the beginning of his sermon on the unity of the Church, John Paul could be heard by the Catholic loyalists toward the rear. He said later that he knew they could hear him because he saw and heard that they were applauding. But when he reached the point where he explained the impossibility of a “Popular Church” set over against the Church’s legitimate pastors, the Sandinista mob in front of the altar became raucous and tried to drown him out. The local engineers turned down the Pope’s microphone and turned up the volume on the microphones that had been placed among the agitators.50 As this was going on, the government officials on the tribune next to the altar platform continued to misbehave. At last, an angry John Paul had had enough and shouted over the mob, “Silencio!” A measure of order was finally restored, although at the end of the Mass the Sandinista chief of protocol went to the engineering console and demanded that the Sandinista anthem be played as a recessional hymn.51 John Paul stood at the front of the platform, took his crucifix-topped crosier by its base, held it high over his head, and waved it b
ack and forth in salute to the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguan Catholics who had been kept penned at the back of the venue.
The Sandinistas’ subsequent claim—that the mob’s attempt to shout down the Pope had been a spontaneous reaction—was a clumsy lie. Their attempted desecration of the papal Mass also backfired politically. Father Tucci had convinced the regime to join a regional television hookup, so the debacle at the papal Mass was broadcast throughout Central America. Millions were shocked at the vulgarity of Sandinista misbehavior. When he returned to Costa Rica late that night, the Pope was met by a larger and friendlier crowd than had greeted him the day before. The Sandinista myth began, slowly, to erode.
Over nine days, John Paul visited Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and Haiti, in addition to Nicaragua. In El Salvador, he preached on reconciliation and made a previously unplanned visit to the tomb of Archbishop Romero. In Guatemala, he defended the native population and challenged the repressive measures taken by the government of General Efrain Ríos Montt. In Haiti, he criticized the regime of the Duvalier family. The Pope was attacked for not mentioning the murdered Archbishop Romero in his sermon in El Salvador, and the pilgrimage as a whole was criticized by those who somehow identified the Salvadoran guerrillas and the Sandinistas with the cause of democracy. The hard-pressed Catholic leader of Nicaragua, Archbishop Obando, was pleased, however. He knew that the great majority of his people had been impressed and touched by the fact that the Pope had come to them, and the Sandinistas’ behavior at the papal Mass had clarified the situation. As Obando later recalled, “People began to ask, ‘Who are they to treat the Church this way?’…People who were doubtful about their relationship to the revolution could now see which side they were on, because they saw how [the regime] treated the Holy Father.”52 For his part, the Pope unmistakably signaled his support for the embattled archbishop of Managua by naming him a cardinal in May 1985.
A year after the papal pilgrimage to Central America, José Napoleon Duarte, the Christian Democratic leader, defeated Robert D’Aubuisson, a vicious ex–military officer whom many suspected of involvement in the murder of Archbishop Romero, in a presidential runoff election in El Salvador—an important indication of the Salvadoran people’s interest in a nonviolent democratic transition beyond traditional oligarchy. The Sandinista grip on Nicaragua continued, though, and the priests in the government remained defiant. In August 1984, Father D’Escoto and the Cardenal brothers were formally informed by the Holy See that they were in violation of canon law and must leave their government offices. All three refused.
THE INSTRUCTIONS ON LIBERATION THEOLOGY
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had been working on a statement on liberation theology for some time. Its Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation was issued on August 6, 1984, a week before the Sandinista clergy were ordered to leave office. The Instruction had its origins in a 1982 conversation involving John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger. The intellectual initiative was John Paul’s. He believed that liberation was a great biblical and Christian theme and that the Church had a responsibility to develop an authentic theology of liberation, particularly in light of what was happening in Latin America. Since the question involved the encouragement of sound theology, John Paul charged CDF with tackling the problem.53
At the time, the most prominent and accomplished Latin American liberation theologian was Father Gustavo Gutiérrez, so the Congregation studied his work, while examining other representative figures and the “translation” of their teachings into religious education, preaching, and pastoral practice. Bishops from throughout Latin America were consulted and Ratzinger kept the Pope informed of the discussions. As the text of a statement was being developed, it became clear that two things were needed: a critical identification of the problem areas in liberation theology, and a positive elaboration of the theme of Christian liberation. Thus while the Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation was being developed, a decision was made to complement this first, critical reading of problematic liberation theologies with a second instruction that would lay the foundations for a more adequate theology of liberation.54
The principal points in the first Instruction, which was personally approved by John Paul II, paralleled the Pope’s address to the Latin American bishops at Puebla in 1979. Liberation, it stated, was an important Christian theme. Far too many people in Latin America lived in desperate poverty, and the Church had a special responsibility to them. The Instruction also acknowledged that there were several varieties of liberation theology, as there were of contemporary Marxism.
Certain themes in some theologies of liberation, however, were clearly incompatible with Christian orthodoxy. The great biblical image of the Exodus could not be reduced to narrowly political meanings.55 Sin should not be primarily located in social, political, or economic structures, but in human hearts.56 “Good” and “evil” could not be understood in strictly political categories.57 Truth was universal, not “partisan.”58 Class struggle was not the chief dynamic of history, and using class struggle models to justify violent revolution against “structural violence” did not square with a Christian view of history.59 The Gospel “poor in spirit” were not the Marxist “proletariat.”60 The Church was not a “partisan” Church and did not belong to any one social or economic class.61 Christ’s atoning death on the cross could not be given an “exclusively political interpretation” as a symbol of the oppressed in their fight for a new society.62 And the Eucharist, the Church’s central act of worship, must not be reduced to a “celebration of the people in their struggle.”63 The Instruction’s concerns were well-summed-up in one caution raised toward the end of the document: “One needs to be on guard against the politicization of existence which, misunderstanding the meaning of the Kingdom of God and the transcendence of the person, begins to sacralize politics and betray the religion of the people in favor of the projects of the revolution.”64 Christians had a greater freedom to proclaim.
The meaning of that greater freedom was spelled out twenty months later, in the March 1986 Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation. The deepest meaning of liberation, the second Instruction taught, was redemption, since in being redeemed we are freed “from the most radical evil, namely, sin and the power of death.”65 Thus human beings learn the true meaning of their freedom in the Gospel’s call to communion with God.66 Totalitarianism was evil precisely because it violated the radical freedom of the human person before the mystery of God, who “wishes to be adored by people who are free.”67
Sin, or “alienation…from the truth of…being…a creature loved by God” was the fundamental alienation of this or any other century and the basic obstacle to human liberation.68 Work for human freedom was a basic moral responsibility of all Christians, according to what the Instruction called the “principle of solidarity,” for freedom is fulfilled in this world in nonviolent work for the freedom of others.69 The Church did have a “love of preference” for the impoverished and the unfree, but because it was not a partisan Church, that love “excludes no one,” since it was a witness to the God-given dignity of every human being.70 As for “authentic development” in poor countries, that required open political systems with a “real separation between the powers of the State,” which was a safeguard against governmental abuse of human rights.71
The claims of some liberation theologians that the earlier Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation misrepresented their teaching was as unpersuasive as the claim by the Brazilian Franciscan liberation theologian Leonardo Boff and others that the later Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation vindicated their position. The two Instructions differed in tone, but they were two complementary parts of a coherent whole that advanced John Paul II’s prescription for the crisis of modernity. An authentic Christian humanism, addressing human liberation at its most fundamental level and applying that understanding to the reform of soc
iety, was a necessary alternative to the false humanism and false liberation of Marxism. The second Instruction was also an important moment in the development of John Paul’s social doctrine, with its tacit endorsement of democracy as a way to help liberate the poor from oppression and injustice. This was a theme that John Paul would develop at considerable length and depth in the years ahead. It not only challenged those infatuated with Marxism, but those sectors of the Latin American Church that were too comfortable with the economic and political status quo.
The two Instructions further developed John Paul II’s and Cardinal Ratzinger’s common view of Vatican II, that the social activism mandated by the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World should be undertaken in a truly ecclesial way, according to the vision of Catholicism as communio taught by the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. Because the Church’s unique message of liberation through Christ cut deeper than any political analysis, an evangelical Church, bringing the Gospel to life through its social doctrine, was both more authentically Christian and more likely to help liberate men and women from poverty and political oppression.
“HE IS SAD…HE UNDERSTANDS”
Three months after confronting the Sandinistas in Managua, John Paul II faced another challenge to authentic Christian liberation—this time, in his homeland.
The Jaruzelski government’s “state of war” and its violent attempt to restore a “normal” situation in Poland was based on four misconceptions. The first was that Solidarity had been hijacked by extremists and that after their removal from the political scene, “people would [come] back to their senses.” The second was that, with Solidarity eliminated, it would be possible to re-atomize Polish society while improving the economic situation, which party leaders had convinced themselves was the root of social unrest. The goal, following Hungary, was the “Kádárization” of Poland. The third misconception was that the Church would eventually come around and make a deal with the government over the corpse of Solidarity. The fourth was that the West, driven by bankers’ concerns about a Polish debt default, would weaken in its resolve and eventually accommodate itself to the restored Polish order.72 The first three assumptions illustrate just how badly the regime had misread the moral revolution triggered by John Paul II’s June 1979 pilgrimage.
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