Speaking through his translator to faculty and students in the Murray Room last Thursday, the Rev. Fernando Cardenal, S.J. ,Jesuit and former minister of education to Nicaragua, recounted his experiences working with the poor and leading a national literacy campaign in Nicaragua.
Interim Dean for Student Development Paul Chebator introduced Cardenal, describing him as a "Jesuit priest and true servant-leader." Chebator also noted the "amazing conglomeration of offices" sponsoring the event, from administrative offices to student organizations, which included the Undergraduate Government of Boston College and the Emerging Leader Program.
"It was because of his guidance and creative vision that he led the National Literacy Campaign, decreasing the illiteracy rate from 50 to 12 percent," Chebator said. "His was a clear example of conscientious action."
When Chebator spoke with The Heights, he explained why BC invited Cardenal back for a fourth visit. "A number of faculty, administrators, and staff have participated in service immersion trips to Nicaragua," he said. "Invariably, when they come back, one of the most lasting impressions they had was the opportunity to speak with him." Chebator called the Jesuit priest "inspiring" and "an embodiment" of the Jesuit mission of being "men and women for others."
Cardenal described living for nine months with 10 other Jesuits in a Colombian community stricken by "abject poverty."
"In certain moments I had visited certain places and had a brief encounter with poverty," he said. "But to live for nine months in a very poor neighborhood was a very tremendous experience." He spoke of the community as one in which unemployment was the norm - a place with no electricity, very little water, no medicine, no health center, and no schools.
"I became very close to the people who lived in my neighborhood and I grew to love my neighbors and so their suffering became very difficult for me," Cardenal said. He said he was once returning to his neighborhood after buying bread, when he met children who asked him for his bread. "I did what each one of you would have done," Cardenal said. After giving all his bread to the children, he returned empty-handed and said to his companions, "You have to make a decision here. You decide not to eat bread or you choose someone else [to go get it]. I cannot walk with bread in my arm when on the path there are hungry children."
After his time in Colombia, Cardenal formed two ways of understanding poverty and approaching a solution. One was practical: "Poverty in Latin America is unbearable and it cannot be accepted and we need to do anything and everything to change this situation," he said. His other perspective highlighted his religious background: "The God that appears as Jesus in the Gospel is a friend of the poor. He was always with the poor. They were his friends. So I began to understand I could not go to God with an Olympic jump but I had to go through the reality of the poor. As the Gospel writer St. John the Evangelist said, he or she who says that they love God, who they do not see, and they do not love their sisters and brothers who they do see is a liar. And so to not be a liar one must go to God in the midst of the poor."
After his time in Colombia, Cardenal returned to Nicaragua. Inspired by Gandhi, he participated in hunger strikes and taking over buildings "in favor of justice and in favor of the poor." In 1973, after three years, he became known in the city and was approached by a leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, leading a U.S.-supported revolution to overthrow the Somoza dictator, the third in the Somoza political dynasty. Cardenal explained that this was a movement seeking two things: to end the dictatorship and to build a country in favor of the poor.
When he considered whether he should join the movement, Cardenal thought about what God would want him to say. "I realized that God does not want me to respond as the Priest or the Levite and say I'm a Jesuit; I have very sacred things to do. I realized that God wanted me to do what the Samaritan did. To stop at the wounded one, the people of Nicaragua, wounded by abject poverty and dictatorship," Cardenal said.
Cardenal's superior general gave him an ultimatum: choose the Jesuit order or the revolution. Cardenal chose the revolution, leaving the Jesuit order but continuing to live in the Jesuit community for twelve years. After this period, the Superior General reinstated him to the Jesuit community with all rights. It was the first case of a reinstatement in 460 years.
The triumph of the revolution led to the inception of the Nicaragua National Literacy Campaign, spearheaded by Cardenal. The Campaign enlisted 60,000 young people out of a population of 3 million Nicaraguans to work for five months in the mountains with illiterate peasant farmers and their families, teaching them how to read and write. Cardenal was impressed with "the capacity of love" of these volunteers, but a counter revolutionary movement tried to hinder their progress. Seven young women were killed but the volunteers stood firm. "They said nor with bullets nor with kicks will they take us out of this campaign," Cardenal said.
Answering a student question regarding the service culture at BC, Cardenal stressed the importance of forming "organized groups of solidarity" upon return from a service and immersion trip. Getting involved in a group is important, Cardenal said, because "it is the only way that you can guarantee that a student will later become a citizen that will participate in the struggles of our people with your government."
When Dan Ponsetto, director of the Volunteer and Service Learning Center (VSLC), spoke with The Heights, he stressed the abundance of service opportunities for BC students. Even if students aren't involved in a specific program such as 4Boston or Appalachia, they can still go to the VSLC and find something of interest in their database. "That's our problem here at BC," Ponsetto said. "Students are so committed to serving. Between our database and volunteer corps, does everyone always get exactly what he or she wants? No, but they can always come here; there's always something to do."
Cardenal stressed the importance of service and immersion trips as a part of a student's educational experience. "It is important for the student's formation as a full human being and as a Christian," he told The Heights. "Without a serious experience in connection with the poor, we can't achieve full humanity."
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