MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Roman Catholic Cardinal emeritus Miguel Obando y Bravo, who clashed with Nicaragua’s Sandinista leaders and later reconciled with them, died Sunday at age 92, the country’s Roman Catholic Church announced.
The Nicaraguan Bishops’ Conference said that “the Church of Nicaragua is in mourning.”
Obando y Bravo, a Salesian father, served as archbishop of Managua for 37 years before retiring in 2005. He also played an important mediator role throughout Nicaragua’s recent, violent political history.
The cardinal was most famous for his clashes with the leftist Sandinista government of the 1980s, sharply confronting its alliance with a “people’s church,” a Marxist-inspired version of Catholicism that outraged the Vatican.
Pope John Paul II came to Managua in 1983, berated the maverick clerics and ordered Catholics to obey their bishops and avoid “unacceptable ideological commitments.”
Two years later, the pope elevated Obando y Bravo to the role of cardinal.
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