Cardinal Obando urged to support the people

BISHOP PEDRO Casaldaliga of Sao Felix and Bishop Emeritus Sergio Mendez Arceo of Cuernavaca have asked Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, Archbishop of Managua, to commit himself to re-open dialogue with the Sandinista government.
The two bishops wrote a letter with their plea to Cardinal Obando y Bravo in November. After receiving no reply from the cardinal, who is an outspoken critic of Nicaragua's government, Bishop Casaldaliga decided to publish the letter this week.
In the strongly worded message, the two bishops exhort the Nicaraguan cardinal to acknowledge and indeed identify himself with "the efforts of your people" towards selfdel ermination .
The letter also emphasises the need of the Church in Nicaragua — and in the whole of Central America — to support the efforts of those laymen, religious and priests who have sided with the Nicaraguan revolution.
Praising the "sincerity, at times heroic, of so many brothers forming these communities", the bishops urge the cardinal, as leader of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, to share their pastoral responsibility, and not to ignore or condemn the priests' efforts on the basis of their proSandinista views.
Cardinal Obando y Bravo has refused to co-operate with the Sandinista regime since the 1979 revolution swept away the dictatorship of Agostino Somoza.