Miguel D’Escoto, il teologo che umiliò gli USA

(di Geraldina Colotti su “Il Manifesto” del 10 giugno 2017)

Il Nicaragua dice addio a Padre Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, figura storica del sandinismo e della Teologia della Liberazione. Un addio senza tristezza – ha detto la vicepresidente Rosario Murillo – rendendo omaggio a “una personalità eccezionale, un fratello che triste non è stato mai, un fratello indomabile che ha combattuto per il popolo e con il popolo, per tutte le cause giuste, pieno di allegria, di speranza, di fiducia e certezza in quel futuro migliore in cui tutti crediamo e che ci meritiamo”.

Miguel d’Escoto, sacerdote cattolico, nasce a Los Angeles il 5 febbraio del 1931. Trascorre l’infanzia in Nicaragua, poi torna negli Usa per studiare alla fine degli anni 1940. Nel 1953 entra nel seminario della Società missionaria di Maryknoll, dove viene ordinato sacerdote sette anni dopo. A metà degli anni ’70, mentre il continente latinoamericano cerca di seguire la via cubana e si scontra con la dura reazione degli Usa, il sacerdote aderisce alla Teologia della Liberazione, che accompagna il marxismo nella ricerca di giustizia sociale e per questo entra in conflitto aperto con il Vaticano.

Nel 1975 aderisce in segreto al Frente sandinista di liberazione nazionale (Fsln), la guerriglia che combatteva la dittatura in Nicaragua. Nel 1977 fa già parte del Gruppo dei dodici, composto da intellettuali e imprenditori che si oppongono al dittatore Somoza Debayle, ed esprime il suo appoggio pubblico all’Fsln.

Dopo la vittoria del Frente sandinista, nel luglio del 1979, d’Escoto diventa ministro degli Esteri fino al 1990, anno in cui i sandinisti perdono le elezioni e il potere. A differenza di un altro prete-sandinista, il poeta Ernesto Cardenal (scomparso di recente), continua ad accompagnare il percorso del leader sandinista Daniel Ortega, fino al suo ritorno alla presidenza, nel 2007.

Nel 2008 assume per un anno l’incarico di presidente dell’Assemblea generale delle Nazioni unite. Tra il 2007 e il 2011 accompagna il presidente nicaraguense Daniel Ortega come massimo consulente agli Affari esteri. Viene insignito di due onoreficenze, l’ordine Rubén Darío e Carlos Fonseca.

Come ministro degli Esteri, è protagonista di una vittoria storica contro gli Usa. Nel 1984, denuncia alla Corte internazionale di giustizia dell’Aja le attività militari statunitensi contro il Nicaragua, e la Corte gli dà ragione. In quello stesso anno, per la sua attività di teologo progressista e per il ruolo politico che ricopre nel sandinismo, viene sospeso “a divinis” da Vojtyla, il papa guerriero che combatte il “pericolo rosso” a fianco di Reagan e di Tatcher e che praticamente abbandona nelle mani dei carnefici anche il vescovo salvadoregno Oscar Romero. Anche Ernesto Cardenal viene umiliato pubblicamente e sospeso “a divinis” dal papa polacco.

Trent’anni dopo, nell’agosto del 2014, il papa argentino Jorge Bergoglio, annulla l’ordine di sospensione, accogliendo la richiesta di d’Escoto di poter tornare “a celebrare la Santa Eucaristia prima di morire”. D’Escoto torna a celebrare messa a settembre di quell’anno, festeggiato anche in Italia come “sacerdote del mondo”. Pur essendo lontano dalla politica istituzionale, non smette di levare la voce per le cause che considera giuste a livello internazionale.

Insieme ad altre figure storiche della Teologia della Liberazione come Leonardo Boff, due anni fa invia una lettera a Barack Obama per protestare contro le sanzioni imposte al Venezuela di Nicolas Maduro il 9 marzo del 2015: ritenendo “estremamente vergognosa” la motivazione che definisce il Venezuela “una minaccia inusuale e straordinaria per la sicurezza degli Stati uniti”. Una misura – sottolinea nella lettera – “incredibilmente simile a quella emessa da Reagan oltre tre decenni fa per avere le mani libere e aggredire la legittima Rivoluzione sandinistra con la sua guerra dei Contras, nel decennio del 1980.

Anche gli ultimi due appelli internazionali, firmati da un altro grande teologo della Liberazione, Francois Houtart, pochi giorni prima di morire, sono stati in difesa del Venezuela.

Da oggi a lunedì, sarà possibile firmare il “libro di condoglianze” presso l’ambasciata del Nicaragua a Roma, per ricordare “un messaggero di pace e di riconciliazione”.

 

Fr. Miguel D’Escoto put his priestly life at the service of the poo

Maryknoll Fr. Miguel d’Escoto Brokmann joins a demonstration against the Somoza regime in Nicaragua in 1978. (NCR photo/June Carolyn Erlick)Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, the Maryknoll priest who was suspended from the priesthood in 1985 because he was serving in the Nicaraguan government, has died. He was 84. D’Escoto died June 8 in Nicaragua, according to an announcement from the headquarters of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers. The Vatican reinstated D’Escoto to active ministry in 2014.Nicaragua’s first lady and vice president, Rosario Murillo, told the media of the priest’s death, expressing the government’s “deep sorrow and pain” over his passing.In the 1970s, D’Escoto supported the socialist Sandinista National Liberation Front in its effort to overthrow the government of Anastasio Somoza. When the Sandinistas came to power in 1979, D’Escoto was named foreign minister in the administration of Murillo’s husband, President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, a position he would hold until 1990, when the Sandinistas lost political power.Four priests served in Ortega’s government, supporting the Sandinista revolution: D’Escoto; Trappist Fr. Ernesto Cardenal, the Sandinista minister of culture; his brother Jesuit Fr. Fernando Cardenal, minister of education; and Fr. Edgard Parrales, a diocesan priest and Managua’s representative to the Organization of American States. After repeated attempts by the Vatican and the priests’ religious orders to convince them to resign their positions in the Sandinista government, the Vatican suspended them in 1985.Luckily, D’Escoto told NCR in a 2009 interview, he was attending a ministerial meeting in India at the time of John Paul’s visit to Nicaragua. “Otherwise, I’m sure the pope would have scolded me too with his finger,” he said.Yet he also downplayed his state job, telling Jesuit-run America magazine in 1985 that he found no difference between being a doorman or being a foreign minister. “It’s service,” he said, adding that the well-trained privileged few can be a bridge of understanding between their nation and others. He called this task “very noble and also, in a sense, priestly work.”In 1970, D’Escoto founded the Maryknoll publishing house, Orbis Books, and became known as “the revered father” of Orbis. The current publisher, Robert Ellsberg, who met D’Escoto on and off over the last 30 years, remembers D’Escoto returning from trips to Latin America with a suitcase full of manuscripts.Ellsberg called D’Escoto a “prophet” who was able to discern early on that churches in the Third World had a voice of their own. Prior to his publishing voices from the Global South, there had only been one theology in the church — that of Rome, Ellsberg said.The publisher saw in D’Escoto “a deeply devoted follower of Jesus Christ,” who put his priestly life and vocation at the service of the poor, even when it cost him dearly. “He was a revolutionary on behalf of the poor when his nation was attacked by the most powerful country in the world.”In June 2008, D’Escoto was elected president of the 63rd United Nations General Assembly by acclimation and came to preside over 192 member nations for a year. Already 76 and afflicted with Meniere’s disease, the priest said he was “astonished” by his selection, as he’d never campaigned for the post and was not a politician.His primary goal was to convene a meeting on the worldwide recession that was the result of the 2008 global financial crisis. He wanted to know what would be its effect on development, especially for small nations.Specifically, the priest sought to keep converging crises — global food security, the energy crisis, the water crisis, climate change and the threats to peace and security from violence and war — in front of General Assembly delegates throughout his year’s tenure. He spent much of that year traveling and meeting with diplomats on behalf of peacemaking and the planet’s health.”I know only sin can separate me from God,” he said. “My work and my responsibilities at the U.N. and in my country are motivated by what it means to be a priest, what it means to be a disciple, an apostle of peace and a follower of Jesus Christ. All I can say is when I was suspended I wept and I wept.””I think it helped that the reconciliation happened with a Latin American pope. Latinos understand these matters better,” said Fr. Ernie Lukaschek, who served for decades as a Maryknoll missioner in Chile and met D’Escoto “on and off when he was in Chile” and at Maryknoll during Lukaschek’s seminary days.They point to Latin America’s martyrs — El Salvador Archbishop Oscar Romero; the four religious women raped and murdered in that same war-torn land; the six Jesuits, their cook and her daughter assassinated as well in El Salvador; along with other killings of religious land reformers and social justice advocates in Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala and across Central and South America.A holy man with poetic sensibilities, his worldview is contained in his oft-quoted prayer written in 1984:While D’Escoto’s funeral arrangements are still pending, Maryknoll Fr. Tom Tiscornia offered a Mass for him June 11 at a U.N. displaced persons camp in South Sudan, the world’s newest nation, where war and famine are constants.  The priest had good memories of D’Escoto from his seminary days at Maryknoll, New York, in the early 1970s. “I think he would have loved [the setting of the Mass] and found it so fitting, as I am sure refugees and displaced people were important to him,” Tiscornia said in an email from Wau, South Sudan. To love life is to risk it, to live it fully means being ready always to lose it. giving it over entirely to solidarity.As a lifelong crusader for the impoverished, displaced and marginalized peoples of Latin America and the world, D’Escoto often raised his voice against American militarism, against capitalism’s exploitation of Mother Earth, against nuclear weapons, against trade and finance accords that he saw disadvantaging citizens and favoring the neo-oligarchs of a new world order.Many see in Francis’ gesture of mercy a signal that the theology of liberation espoused by D’Escoto and other Latin American clergy was not a Marxist-motivated ideology so much as it was an interpretation of Catholic social teaching in the context of Latin American life in the second half of the 20th century.His lamentation turned to tears of joy in 2014 when, after he petitioned Pope Francis to have his suspension lifted, the Latin American pontiff did just that.Still, he did not forget the sadness he felt when he learned of Rome’s suspension of his priestly role more than three decades earlier. The subject re-emerged during the NCR interview as D’Escoto’s U.N. office held many religious objects, icons and paintings — on view for all to see.Moreover, he sought to encourage “a profound democratization” of the world body. D’Escoto noted that there’d always been “states that have been accustomed to calling the shots, to treating the rest of the world community as marginal or unimportant. But the problems we face are no longer binational, not even regional,” he told NCR. “They’re global and all states must be included in solving them.””I began to pray in order to discern what our Lord wants me to do,” he told NCR during a lengthy interview at his U.N. office in New York in 2009.

UN tenure

In June 2008, D’Escoto was elected president of the 63rd United Nations General Assembly by acclimation and came to preside over 192 member nations for a year. Already 76 and afflicted with Meniere’s disease, the priest said he was “astonished” by his selection, as he’d never campaigned for the post and was not a politician.

“I began to pray in order to discern what our Lord wants me to do,” he told NCR during a lengthy interview at his U.N. office in New York in 2009.

His primary goal was to convene a meeting on the worldwide recession that was the result of the 2008 global financial crisis. He wanted to know what would be its effect on development, especially for small nations.

Moreover, he sought to encourage “a profound democratization” of the world body. D’Escoto noted that there’d always been “states that have been accustomed to calling the shots, to treating the rest of the world community as marginal or unimportant. But the problems we face are no longer binational, not even regional,” he told NCR. “They’re global and all states must be included in solving them.”

Specifically, the priest sought to keep converging crises — global food security, the energy crisis, the water crisis, climate change and the threats to peace and security from violence and war — in front of General Assembly delegates throughout his year’s tenure. He spent much of that year traveling and meeting with diplomats on behalf of peacemaking and the planet’s health.

Still, he did not forget the sadness he felt when he learned of Rome’s suspension of his priestly role more than three decades earlier. The subject re-emerged during the NCR interview as D’Escoto’s U.N. office held many religious objects, icons and paintings — on view for all to see.

“I know only sin can separate me from God,” he said. “My work and my responsibilities at the U.N. and in my country are motivated by what it means to be a priest, what it means to be a disciple, an apostle of peace and a follower of Jesus Christ. All I can say is when I was suspended I wept and I wept.”

His lamentation turned to tears of joy in 2014 when, after he petitioned Pope Francis to have his suspension lifted, the Latin American pontiff did just that.

“I think it helped that the reconciliation happened with a Latin American pope. Latinos understand these matters better,” said Fr. Ernie Lukaschek, who served for decades as a Maryknoll missioner in Chile and met D’Escoto “on and off when he was in Chile” and at Maryknoll during Lukaschek’s seminary days.

Many see in Francis’ gesture of mercy a signal that the theology of liberation espoused by D’Escoto and other Latin American clergy was not a Marxist-motivated ideology so much as it was an interpretation of Catholic social teaching in the context of Latin American life in the second half of the 20th century.

They point to Latin America’s martyrs — El Salvador Archbishop Oscar Romero; the four religious women raped and murdered in that same war-torn land; the six Jesuits, their cook and her daughter assassinated as well in El Salvador; along with other killings of religious land reformers and social justice advocates in Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala and across Central and South America.

As a lifelong crusader for the impoverished, displaced and marginalized peoples of Latin America and the world, D’Escoto often raised his voice against American militarism, against capitalism’s exploitation of Mother Earth, against nuclear weapons, against trade and finance accords that he saw disadvantaging citizens and favoring the neo-oligarchs of a new world order.

A holy man with poetic sensibilities, his worldview is contained in his oft-quoted prayer written in 1984:

To love life is to risk it, to live it fully means being ready always to lose it. giving it over entirely to solidarity.

While D’Escoto’s funeral arrangements are still pending, Maryknoll Fr. Tom Tiscornia offered a Mass for him June 11 at a U.N. displaced persons camp in South Sudan, the world’s newest nation, where war and famine are constants.

The priest had good memories of D’Escoto from his seminary days at Maryknoll, New York, in the early 1970s. “I think he would have loved [the setting of the Mass] and found it so fitting, as I am sure refugees and displaced people were important to him,” Tiscornia said in an email from Wau, South Sudan.

 

[Patricia Lefevere is a longtime contributor to NCR. Read her 2009 interview with D’Escoto at the United Nations here.]from The National Catholic Register, ) june 2017