ARTICLES

The Church Endures

WITH QUINN GONE, NICARAGUAN CARDINAL
WELCOME AT SAN FRANCISCO CATHEDRAL

by Stephen Schwartz

Hurricane Mitch has had a devastating effect on the Central American nations of Nicaragua and Honduras, resulting in a roster of deaths and towns submerged in mud. Its winds and rains have killed more than 3,000 Nicaraguans in floods and mudslides and left some 40,000 people homeless. Infrastructural damage is immense: 8,000 miles of roads washed out, 29 bridges destroyed, and two thirds of the country's farm cultivation destroyed.

The Nicaraguan Catholic Church, led by Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, is at the forefront of the relief effort. So, too, are Bay Area Nicaraguans. Leonard Lacayo, a leader in the Bay Area Nicaraguan American community, which now numbers more than 150,000, knew to consult a Catholic group when he began organizing relief for his friends and relatives in Nicaragua.

"I turned to Hogar del Nino, a Salesian-run foundation in the town of Chinandega. They have operated for 35 years. They had 190 children in care before Mitch; the number jumped to 500 after the hurricane. These are kids they are feeding in the outlying areas.''

Not everybody is so helpful, says Lacayo, noting that certain Bay Area leftists are actually undermining his relief effort.

"The old friends of the Sandinistas in the Bay Area went on a propaganda offensive to claim that the Nicaraguan Catholic Church was using the relief effort for political purposes," Lacayo says. "The local bishops in Nicaragua are the best conduit for relief. But the local left-wingers in the Bay Area solicited donations to private groups with this or that name that most of us never heard of, like the 'Central American Network.' "

Lacayo says that when he travelled around the Bay Area for fund-raising efforts he found that many people had pledged support, not to the reliable Catholic Church and the International Red Cross, but to spurious "nonprofits" which operate as Sandinista support groups.

One of the most active such groups, the American Friends Service Committee, claims to be an arm of the Quaker denomination but has actually served as a political front for radical groups like the Sandinistas for decades.

Despite this left-wing misdirection, Lacayo dispatched 45,000 pounds of food and 5,000 pounds of medicine at the end of November, via the port of Corinto. Lacayo is also sending a donation of 500,000 pounds of a natural organic fertilizer to restore topsoil blown away by the storm. "We're going to rebuild the farm economy starting with the topsoil,'' he says.

According to Lacayo, the obstructive attitude of Bay Area leftists on Nicaraguan storm aid reflects long-standing prejudices and propaganda prevalent in the region.

Lacayo recalls with some bitterness that the pro-Sandinista posture of Bay Area leftists was shared, at least in part, by former San Francisco Catholic Archbishop John R. Quinn. Quinn publicly sympathized with the "liberation theology" line in Central America, which held that supporting Marxist-Leninist guerrillas was a superior expression of the Catholic magisterium than the mass, catechism, and other traditional Catholic works.

As the popular resistance to the Sandinistas heated up in the 1980s, "Quinn would not invite the cardinal, one of the greatest men of God in the world, to San Francisco,'' Lacayo says. "They said no three times. They turned down a petition with 10,000 names from people in the Bay Area, saying it was too political.''

Sources who spoke on condition of anonymity point out that Quinn also refused to allow Monsignor Federico Arguello, pastor of Diriamba in Nicaragua and a leading member of that nation's hierarchy who opposed the Sandinistas, a place to stay on church property while he was exiled to San Francisco during the Sandinista-Contra war.

According to Lacayo, Quinn's attitude did not noticeably change even after the Sandinista regime dissolved, giving way to the elected administration of Violeta Chamorro, who was succeeded by another democratic president, Arnoldo Aleman.

With the removal of Quinn and arrival of Archbishop William Levada, the archdiocesan posture toward Cardinal Obando y Bravo changed dramatically, according to Lacayo.

In June of last year, on the official invitation of Levada, Obando y Bravo visited San Francisco for the first time since 1980. He was greeted by some 2,500 Nicaraguan Americans who filled St. Mary's Cathedral to overflowing for a festive mass.

Hundreds received communion from the Cardinal. Lacayo calls it "one of the most glorious, joyful religious events ever held in this city."

Obando y Bravo is considered one of the most charismatic figures in the worldwide Catholic community. He was a stern opponent of the Somoza dictatorship and became an equally committed critic of Sandinismo. Many observers believe that as a beloved Church leader from the underdeveloped world, of Indian background, Obando y Bravo would make a blessed successor to Pope John Paul II.

Today even some Sandinistas admit that Cuban-inspired harassment of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua was a major error on the part of the Marxist rulers, for Obando y Bravo and the Nicaraguan Church came out of the conflict stronger than ever. Nicaragua is notable among the Central American nations as a place where Catholicism has held the line against the aggressive organizing efforts of the Protestant sects.

Nicaraguan traditional Catholicism has deep roots. Its clergy is native, deeply linked with the national culture of the country. Nicaraguan Catholic intellectuals have educated the youth and produced influential literary works for generations.

Even more important, each Nicaraguan village has its cofradia, or religious brotherhood, charged with administering sacred observances in the name of the village's patron saints. Processions honoring village saints are a major feature of Nicaraguan life. The Sandinistas, in a colossally counterproductive move, attempted to forbid such outdoor religious processions.

The Nicaraguan Marxist cadre also sought to replace the Catholic Church with a "liberation church'' that promoted political violence and sexual libertinism.

San Francisco's former archbishop Quinn did not go so far as to endorse the schismatic "liberation church." But he was known to have referred to members of the Salvadoran church hierarchy in derogatory terms.

Quinn's stance towards Nicaragua was significant, given that San Francisco was the capital of the Nicaraguan diaspora in the United States from the middle of the 19th century to the 1979 revolution, after which Nicaraguan refugees began pouring into Florida.

During the Gold Rush, from 1849 to 1853, Nicaragua was a major way station for emigrants from the East Coast of the U.S. and Europe, heading for California. Many Nicaraguans, in turn, came to live in San Francisco's Mission District. Juan Carlos Ferretti, the last surviving commandante under the guerrilla leader Augusto C. Sandino, whose insurgency ended in 1934, resided in San Francisco for many years. And Nicaraguan leftists established a major branch of the Sandinista movement in San Francisco in the 1970s.

But with the overthrow of dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, politics changed completely among Bay Area Nicaraguan Americans. Those who supported the Sandinistas returned to Nicaragua. An entirely new influx of refugees was, by contrast, overwhelmingly anti-Sandinista.

The Bay Area, predictably, given its left-wing history, became a center for pro-Sandinista activity among non-Hispanics. Consequently, Nicaraguan Americans felt themselves under siege, discovering that the Marxism from which they fled also resided in the U.S.

According to Lacayo, the semi-chaotic Hurricane Mitch relief effort provides a bizarre echo of the Sandinista period, when European governments, non-governmental organizations, and international institutions flooded Nicaragua with technological and other donations. Because the Sandinistas could not efficiently handle the influx of supplies, machinery rusted on the docks, food rotted, and medical supplies were stolen.

Lacayo says that the legacy of the Sandinista era is also visible in the "exposure'' by Hurricane Mitch of countless land mines sown on Central American soil during the Sandinista-Contra war.

The current head of the Nicaraguan army, former Sandinista leader Joaquin Cuadra, announced that his forces have maps showing where the Marxist forces planted more than 100,000 land mines. Although the Organization of American States has undertaken a mine removal program in Nicaragua, it is estimated that more than 80,000 remain. General Cuadra noted grimly last month that mine removal might be facilitated by the effects of the storm, which uncovered them.

As Nicaraguans recover from Hurricane Mitch and their Sandinista past, they must stresses Lacayo look to the Church for guidance. "The Catholic church, and especially the local bishops, are the real future of Nicaragua."

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