Ernesto Cardenal Martinez was a Nicaraguan Catholic priest, poet, and politician.
18 Facts About Ernesto Cardenal
2.
Ernesto Cardenal was a liberation theologian and the founder of the primitivist art community in the Solentiname Islands, where he lived for more than ten years.
3.
Ernesto Cardenal was prohibited from administering the sacraments in 1984 by Pope John Paul II, but rehabilitated by Pope Francis in 2019.
4.
Ernesto Cardenal was ordained a Catholic priest in 1965 in Granada.
5.
Ernesto Cardenal went to the Solentiname Islands, where he founded a Christian, almost-monastic, mainly-peasant community, which eventually led to the founding of the artists' colony.
6.
Ernesto Cardenal collaborated closely with the leftist Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional in working to overthrow Anastasio Somoza Debayle's regime.
7.
When Pope John Paul II visited Nicaragua in 1983, he openly scolded Ernesto Cardenal, who knelt before him on the Managua airport runway, for resisting his order to resign from the government, and admonished him: "Usted tiene que arreglar sus asuntos con la Iglesia".
8.
Ernesto Cardenal remained Minister of Culture until 1987, when his ministry was closed for economic reasons.
9.
Ernesto Cardenal left the FSLN in 1994, protesting the authoritarian direction of the party under Daniel Ortega, calling it a "robbery of the people and dictatorship not a revolutionary movement" when he left the government.
10.
Ernesto Cardenal was a member of the Movimiento de Renovacion Sandinista that participated in the 2006 Nicaraguan general election.
11.
Ernesto Cardenal was a member of the board of advisers of the Latin American television station teleSUR.
12.
Ernesto Cardenal was a polemical figure in Nicaragua's literary and cultural history.
13.
Ernesto Cardenal has been described as "the most important poet right now in Latin America" politically and poetically.
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Ernesto Cardenal was a vocal representative for Nicaragua and a key to understanding the contemporary literary and cultural life of Nicaragua.
15.
Ernesto Cardenal participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2007.
16.
On 1 March 2020, Ernesto Cardenal died due to complications from ongoing heart and kidney problems.
17.
At his request, Ernesto Cardenal's remains were cremated and then buried in the community he founded on the Solentiname Islands.
18.
Ernesto Cardenal's poetry was heavily influenced by his unique Catholic ideology, mainly liberation theology.