The Rev. Gary Smith worked with several young students at Kakuma Refugee camp, including Luul, a Muslim from Somalia. Photo courtesy Jesuit Refugee Service.

Jesuit Father Gary Smith has dedicated more than 50 years of his life to serving the poor, including the last dozen in African refugee camps in Uganda, South Africa and Kenya. He says that working with the poor in U.S. cities, such as Portland, Tacoma and Oakland, prepared him for his work with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in Africa.

“It gave me a viewpoint of how the church had moved toward the poor. All the personalities you find on the streets prepare you for all the personalities you find in the camps. Human beings are human beings,” Fr. Smith says.

Now back in the states, Fr. Smith recently spoke with The Oregonian about why he’s drawn to Africa: “There are the poor and there are the poor. My experience in the refugee camp is that people there have no address, no money, no documents. The degree of poverty is very different.”

Fr. Smith also discussed working with refugees from other faiths.  He said working with Muslims was not difficult. “They believe in the absolute, the creator. They want help discerning how God is moving in their lives,” he says. “They saw me as a father, someone who wanted to listen to them very attentively. These students knew the Quran, and they rejected extremists out of hand.”

Fr. Smith also spent time helping refugee students work on an online diploma program through Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins, which is run by Jesuit universities and JRS.  “When you work with really bright refugees who want nothing more than to be a man and a woman for others, there is a great sense of accomplishment in that,” Fr. Smith says.

To read the complete interview with Fr. Smith, visit The Oregonian website.

For his long experiment, Jesuit novice Tim Casey taught at Yap Catholic High School in Micronesia. In this shortened piece below, you can read about Casey’s experience. The full piece can be found on this page of the New York,  New England and Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus’ vocations website.

Before I entered the Jesuits, I had been a high school teacher. I worked in two affluent school districts in the metro-Boston area and I felt confident that I had become a good teacher. I knew that there were better teachers than I, but I was confident that I was good. And so when the novice director asked what I wanted to do for long experiment, teaching was not at the top of my list. In the novitiate, I had enjoyed branching out into other ministries. I had worked in the jails and prisons of New York State, I had helped administer an annotated version of the Spiritual Exercises and I had worked as a hospital orderly in the Bronx. I remember feeling lukewarm about returning to my former profession, and made my preferences known to the novice director about what would be best for long experiment.

The Jesuits have an old Latin expression, agere contra, which roughly translated means to go against the grain. By this, St. Ignatius of Loyola meant that if you feel a certain resistance to something in your life, then it might be beneficial for you to engage those feelings, trying to see what you are resisting and why you are resisting it. And so when my novice director asked me to teach during my long experiment, I said that I would be willing, but I was not particularly excited about the prospect. However, I did make one request of him: Could this teaching position be in some way unconventional and different from my former career? He honored my request. I was sent to a remote island in the North Western Pacific Ocean to teach in a newly established high school in Yap, Micronesia.

Yap is part of the Federated States of Micronesia, a place that has been called “The edge of the world,” by a Jesuit who spent most of his life here. It is one of four states that make up the FSM. I didn’t know much about Micronesia, except that the Jesuits ran a prestigious school on the island of Chuuk called Xavier High School. But that was not where I was headed. Where was this place?

The local church on Yap had been trying for a number of years to open a Catholic high school. In the summer of 2011, two New York Province Jesuits were sent to Yap to make good on the promise of Catholic education and opened Yap Catholic High School in August of that year. They had four teachers (including themselves), two borrowed classrooms, and 34 students. I would become the fifth teacher, teaching Science, Social Studies, moderating the robotics club, acting as an assistant basketball coach, and doing a variety of other odds and ends to aid them in getting this school off the ground and running.

It is an intriguing place, a place that seems to be unencumbered by the events that have transpired in the other parts of the globe. The expression, “An island onto itself” seems to be fitting in more ways than one.

The most rewarding part of my experience on Yap has been the opportunity of getting to know our students. They are naturally curious, polite, pleasant to be with, and somewhat unspoiled by Western culture. I realized this last point after several pop culture references in class were greeted with looks of bewilderment. Television on the island is available, but few are able to afford it and many of our students had never been on a computer before this year. Their world looks very different from the one that I came from, and they are curious to learn about “my world.” This school gives students the opportunity to do just that: to grow, to learn, to mature, to develop their faith and to find their deepest desires. It is a safe place, a haven for kids who, very often, come from difficult and broken family situations. I am often struck by just how many of my students come from very tough family circumstances.

In addition to my teaching duties, there was a practical element to my time in Yap; the task of actually helping to build a new school. Nearly every Saturday morning, community members would gather at our building site with machetes, shovels, chainsaws, picks, and a variety of other tools. My Saturdays were spent clearing land for the new buildings, picking up garbage that had been dumped and left many years before, and driving a pick-up truck filled to the brim with volunteers who desired to help but had no transportation. Local women provided lunch on plates woven together from palm leaves. The fare: fish bellies, tarot, coconut crabs, and yams. As the Saturdays piled up, I began to realize just how much I was enjoying these “clearings,” as we called them. I began to look forward to them as a weekly event, almost like a block party. As the buildings began to rise, it became very clear how much the community was rallying around this school, taking part in its construction, and owning it. This is truly a project where many hands contributed many hours of labor. It is something we can all be proud of!

My experience in Micronesia was a blessed time. St. Ignatius of Loyola tells retreatants in the conclusion of the Spiritual Exercises “to ask for an interior knowledge of the many gifts we have received, in order that, being entirely grateful, we may be able, in all things, to love and serve God.” Ignatius’ statement, more than anything I am able to write, best describes my time in Micronesia. In the smiles of the people whom I have met, in the faces and the daily interaction with the students of YCHS, I have witnessed the presence of God among us, the risen Jesus. What a great gift! I was sent to Yap as a teacher, to help students learn, to give something of myself and my talents. But, as the prayer of St. Francis states, “It is in giving that we receive.” As I leave Yap, I leave with a deeper knowledge of this gifted time, and of the many gifted relationships I have developed and come to value. It is here that the vowed life begins to make sense to me, and that choice is confirmed and strengthened in the faces of those with whom I have met and come to love. Although I came here as a teacher, I am comforted by the knowledge that I leave having received much more than I ever bargained for. Kammagar! (Thank You.)

Since 1968, the Jesuits of the Chicago – Detroit Province have had commitment of service with Peru that continues to evolve and flourish today. These relationships between Jesuit provinces, called “twinning,” promote reciprocal sharing between the two and help strengthen and grow the Church’s presence and reach.

The first destinados, Jesuit Fathers Robert Beckman and Benjamin Morin, were missioned to Peru and arrived in Lima on October 28, 1960. Since then, more than 50 Jesuits have been sent out across the county, not only to serve the poor, but also fully embrace the culture and live among the Peruvian people in their communities.

Find out more about the work of the Chicago – Detroit Province Jesuits in Peru by visiting their website, which includes more information, photos, a podcast and a video with the Jesuits who are serving God’s people in Peru.

The government of that Central American nation recently recognized his commitment when it presented him last fall with the Meritorious Service Award for his 64 years of helping the people of Belize by teaching English and, more recently, caring for prisoners.

This disciplined man followed the same daily routine for years, rising at 4 a.m. to exercise, pray and teach English each morning at St. John’s College in Belize City. He ran the Extension School in the late afternoon and evening, returning home in time for bed at 9:30 p.m.

Fr. Stochl founded the Extension School in 1957 in the heart of Belize City. The school’s academic offerings were limited but effective, and were aimed at helping students earn a grade school diploma or “leaving permit” that would qualify them for a government job. He had great organizational skills and was ready to take charge of things.

Jesuit Father Jim Short, who now lives at Bellarmine House in St. Louis, worked with Fr. Stochl for years, including time together at St. Martin de Porres Parish in Belize City. “Jack had a good touch with people and chose good teachers,” he said. “He had goals and knew what he wanted to achieve.”

That keen sense of focus was evident in his various roles over many years in the Jesuits’ mission in Belize. He was first and foremost a dedicated and demanding teacher of the English language, constantly pushing his students to master English.

He served as headmaster of the secondary education division of St. John’s College from 1965 to 1969 and from 1987 to 1992; he was the mission superior from 1977 to 1983.

The Meritorious Service Award noted his radio work as well, saying that “his voice may be familiar to some early risers because for the past 34 years, going back to the days of Radio Belize, he has delivered a brief Morning Devotion talk each week.”

He took up residence at St. Martin’s parish in 1987 and served as its pastor from 1995 until 2004.

“He turned out to be an excellent pastor,” Short said, someone who continued the good relationships with people in the parish that his predecessors had begun.

In 2005, when he turned 80, Fr. Stochl became pastoral minister to inmates of the Belize prison. At the urging or a parishioner, he reluctantly visited prisoners who were reading the Bible. Fr. Stochl said he was not sure at first whether they were sincere or just faking, but “we got along comfortably and I continued to visit them each week. So when I retired from the parish and looked for something to do, the prison was the obvious choice”

Fr. Stochl’s work has grown. He goes to the prison at least five days a week and offers Mass on Saturdays for around 100 inmates with no guard present. He also runs three weekly counseling groups and visits men in the Maximum Security and punishment sections.

“Being present to them and interested means a lot,” he said. He is secretary of the Belize branch of Prison Fellowship International, and is involved in two rehabilitation programs.  “The work grows on you, and so do the inmates once you get to know them as persons.”

The thread that connects these different areas of Fr. Stochl’s ministry is his sense of identifying with the Belizean people.

He became a Belizean citizen in 1974, not as a political statement but as a sign that he would remain with the people. Early on he developed a great affection for the Garifuna, Afro-Caribbean people who live along Belize’s southern coast and other parts of Central America. As a scholastic, Fr. Stochl worked with a number of Garifuna students to create a way of writing their language. He continued this project during summer vacations in theology with the help of now retired Bishop Martin. The result was a dictionary and a small prayer book,

In Belize City, he always took time to chat with ordinary people. Now, he talks with prisoners, teaching a religious sensibility that will help them.

“He is where he should be,” Fr. Short said. “His heart is in the right place.”

This article, by Jesuit Father Tom Rochford, originally appeared in the Jesuits of the Missouri Province’s magazine Jesuit Bulletin. To download the full magazine, please click here.

The warlord and his ruthless guerrilla group are responsible for a 26-year campaign of terror in Uganda that has been marked by child abductions and widespread killings. Last year, President Obama dispatched 100 U.S. troops — mostly Army Special Forces — to Central Africa to advise regional forces in their hunt for Kony.

The group running the Kony 2012 campaign is holding a nationwide event today – Friday, April 20 —  titled “Cover the Night,” where supporters are encouraged to spread the word of Kony 2012 around their local communities.

The Society of Jesus, the largest religious order of Roman Catholic priests and brothers in the world, has worked in Uganda for more than 40 years.  The Society’s Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) has conducted peace-building workshops, run schools and economic development projects and ministered to refugees in Uganda. In 2005, the Jesuits of the Eastern Africa Province began planning for a secondary school in northern Uganda, the Ocer Campion Jesuit College in Gulu. The co-educational high school admitted its first students in early 2010 and is already having a tremendously positive impact in a region devastated by over 20 years of civil war. The school will grow to a capacity of 1,200 students and includes agricultural and vocational training as well as rigorous academic formation in the Jesuit tradition, religious formation and peace education.

In this podcast, Jesuit Father Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, the Jesuit provincial of Eastern Africa, speaks with National Jesuit News about the Jesuit’s work in Uganda, the progress that’s been made, the work that still needs to be done and how young people can get involved.

The Jesuits in the region have been working for the last two years to help rebuild the homes, especially for the poorest in the community.

“We are handing over 127 houses in Manvi and Sindanoor subdistrict,” said Jesuit Father Eric Mathias, director of the Centre for Non Formal and Continuing Education, a Jesuit-run non-governmental organization (NGO).

“We have been given a lovely house with a bedroom, hall and kitchen. This is a great gift to all of us who had no shelter, said Arogyappa, one of the beneficiaries.

Each home cost 150,000 rupees (US $3,000). Ninety percent of the funds to build the homes were provided by the Jesuit-run center, the rest came from donations.

Hampayya Nayak, a local legislator, praised the Jesuits for their efforts during the handing over ceremony in late February.

“I appreciate the Jesuits’ commitment to the cause of the poor. They have shown people through their work where God is really found.”

[UCANews]

In 1972, Jesuit Father John Baumann started a small training institute with the goal of supporting neighborhood organizations in California. What eventually came from this idea was the Pacific Institute for Community Organizations, now known as the PICO National Network. And, his desire to help local organizations has grown to a national outreach program, which has helped more than a million families and 1,000 congregations from 40 religious denominations. PICO has successfully worked to increase access to healthcare, improve public schools, make neighborhoods safer, build affordable housing and redevelop communities. Because of his work on problems facing urban, suburban and rural communities, Fr. Baumann sat down with the National Catholic Reporter to share his perspective on the U.S. economy today.

NCR: From your long-term perspective, what do you make of all that’s going on in the U.S. today regarding economic disparity, Occupy movements, etc.?

Baumann: I’d say that many Americans believe that the American Dream, also known as “America is the land of opportunity,” was once true, but it doesn’t hold anymore. Every previous generation has really known America as the land of opportunity, where children were expected to do as well or better than their parents. Yet, today we find our nation in a crisis, with record levels of poverty, the rising inequality and worsening predictions for our children’s future.

What is really troubling to me is this whole gap between the rich and the poor that has been growing over the past 20 years or more. It’s not an aberration; it’s a result of deliberate choices. It seems like that over the last 40 years, a series of economic choices have really redistributed the income upwards and as a result of that, it provided less and less opportunities to everyone else. All this has led to the financial stress on our families, and really it’s something that hasn’t been seen since the Great Depression.

When you started PICO years ago, did you ever imagine that this discussion of income inequality would be happening today?

When I started PICO, then, as now, I saw organizing as a way of responding to people’s pain. Organizing was a means of giving people an opportunity to express their values and their faith by forming faith-based organizations that gave them power to act, to bring about change so that their families would have a better quality of life. Today, organizing continues to respond to people’s pain, especially what we’re discussing — the results of inequality and class warfare. People want to make a difference. I often thought that if our elected officials were doing their job, responding to the needs of people, there’d be no need for organizing. Organizers would be out of a job. We really expect a government that works for everyone, not just for the powerful. So today I would say faith-based organizing is needed more than ever. People want to make a difference. They want their children to do as well as or better than their parents.

Are you happy with today’s discussion, that people are discussing it more in everyday conversation?

Again, it demonstrates to me the need for faith-based organizing. The faith community has a pivotal role for people to express their faith through action. The people, I believe, were inspired by their faith to seek, to unify people to reduce poverty, to bring about justice. Again, it’s about taking our faith into action, and it’s about challenging our elected leaders to put first the needs of families and the common good of our nation. People want to remake America into a land of opportunity for all people. I think this discussion continually highlights the importance of people uniting and coming together. And really, what all this means is people want a fair tax code that insists everyone pay their fair share, people want an increased access to health care, they want to end the foreclosure and underwater mortgage crisis, comprehensive immigration reform policy with a path to citizenship, strong federal action, I believe, to end the mass incarceration of people of color — these are things that people just have always wanted. They have wanted a better quality of life for their families.

What is your assessment of what is happening with all these protests and speaking out: Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

I’m thinking in terms of the fact that I’m a clergyperson, and think in terms of and also the role of clergy that play such an important role in faith-based organizing. It seems to me that many Americans long for a stronger moral leadership from churches and clergy regarding what’s going on in our country, especially the economic problems. I’d like to think of it in terms of just as God called the ancient prophets in our scriptures to condemn injustices, I think we, too, as clergy and through our community organizations must speak out when we see the unchecked greed of wealthy elites and the corrupting influences of powerful special interests. I think it’s important that we speak out, not only as clergy but through our faith-based organizing that we speak out.

Do you think the clergy are doing that today?

Through PICO we’re making a strong effort to reach out to clergy across our network to do this. We have actually put that in motion, to give clergy an opportunity to sign onto what we’re calling a prophetic voice for our country. If you go to our website, there’s the statement that clergy have put together that we’re anticipating getting 20,000 signatures to this prophetic voice statement, a call to action as we’re calling it.

Any other comments?

I keep getting back to, again, many Americans believe that the American Dream, which is “America is the land of opportunity,” that was once held true doesn’t anymore. And that it’s very important that we don’t sit back. We need to speak out and do something about it.

[PICO Network]

Fr. Don Vettese, SJ, with Calendar, a leader of the garbage dwellers in Panamá.

It is often said that the Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways which we are unable to predict or sometimes to even understand. For Jesuit Father Don Vettese what should have been an impediment, a traffic accident, instead opened up the possibility of an even greater calling — to serve the poorest of the poor.

It was 1994 and Fr. Vettese was then president of St. John’s Jesuit High School in Toledo, Ohio.  One day, after his talk with the school’s senior class about the Christian calling to have a preferential option for service to the poor, the students approached Vettese with an idea.

“A few of the students came to my office to explain the difficulty of feeling compassion for the poor without experience,” says Vettese, “and they challenged me to help them educate their hearts.”

It was from that conversation Vettese planned a student service trip to an orphanage he’d founded a few years earlier in Guatemala City.

What Vettese did not know was that this trip would turn into something much greater. One morning, as Vettese and the students  were driving to the orphanage to work , there was a traffic jam resulting from a car accident. When their van was diverted from the main road  they suddenly found themselves in the Guatemala City garbage dump. Here they witnessed a sight that was almost unreal to them: a community of people living, quite literally, in garbage.

“The scene,” Vettese recalls, “was hell. There were acres of mounded garbage burning. There were hundreds of people milling around, looking for food and recyclables, while animals fed on the garbage. Vultures with eight-foot wing spans were swooping down for food and at the recyclers. We saw infants being stuffed into the trash and covered with cardboard to prevent the vultures from hurting them, and later discovered that their mothers felt the dangers from the vulture attacks were more serious than the rat bites that would occur from stuffing them into the garbage.”

Vettese’s talk about Christian leadership came back to the group full-force; that evening, he and the students reflected on the experience of the day, and the students wanted to know what could be done about the plight of the families they’d seen living in the dump. It was that fundamental question which led to the formation of International Samaritan.

Founded in 1995, International Samaritan works to develop livable communities for garbage dump dwellers.  The organization first partners with local governments and other non-profits to put basic infrastructure in place, and then begins addressing the vital needs of each community. The first priority in Guatemala was to build a nursery, so that babies and toddlers could be safe from the dangers of the dump. From there, the organization built schools, homes and community centers, and implemented a micro-loan program. In the years since 1995, International Samaritan has expanded its reach to communities in Egypt, Honduras, Haiti, El Salvador and Panama, and is currently conducting feasibility studies in Sierra-Leon and Ethiopia.

“Our business plan,” says Vettese, “is designed so that we plant the programmatic seeds with the goal of turning the projects over to qualified partners. The people we serve need everything, so we start any project that meets a basic need with partners who agree to sustain them. This frees us to tend to other projects in new locations.”

Many of the results of International Samaritan’s work, notes Vettese, can be difficult to quantify. “I cannot measure how much security a child feels when sleeping in a house with a bed as opposed to being covered by a cardboard box, and I cannot measure the peace of mind a parent feels when his or her child is able to spend the day in a safe and clean nursery as opposed to being stuck in the garbage, or attend school as opposed to working in the dump,” he says.

More concrete evidence of the value of International Samaritan’s work comes from a study administered by faculty at the University of Central America, which reported two key results from the organization’s projects in Guatemala City:

• International Samaritan’s structures and programs have brought stability to a neighborhood once described by the municipality as “transient” and unworthy of financial investment.
• The attitude toward education in the community is changing from little value for education (as reported by the government) prior to the development of International Samaritan institutions to a desire for more education.

Even more recently, the value of International Samaritan’s work has been recognized and lauded by the United Nations, which has granted the organization status as Special Consultants to the U.N. As a result of this new status, International Samaritan representatives will be granted passes to U.N. meetings and be able to participate at designated U.N. sessions. “In addition,” says Vettese, “this should grant us eligibility for certain United Nations Foundation and United States government grants, and greater opportunities for partnering on poverty relief programs.” Just as importantly, however, this new designation will, according to Vettese, “give voice to the people we serve living in the extreme poverty of garbage dump communities.”

Then, of course, there’s the other side of the coin: the value that International Samaritan volunteers get from participating in the organization’s service trips. “Again, these kinds of results can be difficult to measure,” says Vettese, “but we consider it our ‘other mission’—we are primarily servants of the poor, but we also serve the people who have their hearts touched by the communities they encounter on our immersion trips.”  It’s a mission the organization takes very seriously. “We seek to free them from as many logistics as possible so that they can focus on the experience.” To this end, the organization provides what Fr. Vettese calls “airport to airport” stewardship of trip participants. “All they have to do,” he says, “is get themselves to and from the airport. God has blessed us with resources and partnerships that allow us to take care of all of their other concerns so that they can get the most spiritual value possible out of the work they do with us.”

For Vettese, the work of International Samaritan is a daily reminder of God’s generosity. “The truth that came to me on that trip to Guatemala,” he recalls, “was that no one can do anything good without God. When the students initially asked me what we could do about what we saw that day, I said I did not know, and that we would have to wait and see if God would provide opportunities for service. I think He did.”

To find out more about International Samaritan and what you can do to help, visit www.intsamaritan.org, or call 734-222-0701.

For this year’s Teach In, Jesuit Father Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, provincial of the East African Province of the Society of Jesus, was the keynote speaker who discussed the issues facing his province today. During his time at the Teach In, National Jesuit News interviewed Fr. Orobator about the challenges that the Society of Jesus faces in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and the Republics of the Sudan in the North and South.

“I think the unique mission of the Society of Jesus is that we are able to think ‘outside of the box’.” I think that is very unique to Jesuits,” says Fr. Orobator. “We can work in parishes, we can run schools, we can run communications centers, we can run many different apostolates, but we can do it in a way that is unconventional.”

The theme of this year’s event was “The Gritty Reality: Feel It, Think It, Engage It,” derived from a speech given by former Jesuit Superior General, Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, in 2000 entitled, “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in American Jesuit Higher Education.” Kolvenbach said, “students, in the course of their formation, must let the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering and engage it constructively.”

You can watch National Jesuit News’ interview with Fr. Orobator below.

With the assistance of a translator, Fr. Cardenal explained to a packed audience at Boston College that his time spent living in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the Colombian city informed his entire life’s work as a Jesuit and political leader in his native Nicaragua.

Among his neighbors was a family with seven children, whom Cardenal referred to as his “little bodyguards” because they were always following him around. One time, when he returned to his Jesuit residence, Cardenal walked in to find the children eating the Jesuits’ garbage. He described the emotional impact this moment had on him. Cardenal said, “That was a big hit for me. I loved them. You can’t imagine what that did for me.”

He continued, “Many times, the only thing these children had to eat was a roll made from corn and hot water with brown sugar added to it. My neighborhood was like a big lake, and we were all under the water of suffering. Often, I didn’t want to leave the house. The people were always suffering and without hope. When I walked down the street, I kept repeating to myself, ‘Unbearable. Unbearable. Unbearable.’”

Cardenal realized, “I cannot accept that people live this way. As a human being and as a Christian, I cannot accept it. It has to change.”

Upon returning to Nicaragua, the Jesuit continued to work for justice. His first assignment was as the vice-provost for students at the Nicaraguan Jesuit University, where his friend was the university’s president. “I had great admiration for him. He was charismatic and extraordinary,” Cardenal said.

However, on his third day at the job, a student movement erupted on campus because the president, Cardenal’sfriend, refused multiple requests from student leaders for a meeting. “The students requested three things,” he said. “First, they demanded a dialogue with the president. Second, they wanted a reform of the university’s regulations, which were put in place when the school was still very small. And third, they wanted to participate in the arenas and direction of the university.”

Much to his surprise, the students asked Cardenal to speak at their big rally in the school’s gymnasium. “At first, I didn’t want to speak, but I couldn’t say no,” he said. “I wondered, ‘What do I say?’ I worried about being a traitor to my friendship with the president. Eventually, I realized, no matter what, no matter what my superiors say, if I don’t say now what I was thinking, I would be a traitor to the oath I made in Medellin. I told them I heard their request, and I believed it to be just. I felt really emotional. I opened my heart to the students, and I said, ‘I support your position as long as you act without violence and act democratically.”

Later, while working at the national university in Nicaragua, Cardenal was approached by the student rebels fighting against the Somoza dictator. They wanted him to help their cause.

“I explained to Marcos, ‘The French Revolution, the Soviet Revolution, and the Cuban Revolutions—all were done without, in spite of, and against Christians. I am a believer. I am a priest.’”

What brought Cardenal over to their side was that they were working to destroy the Somoza army and build up the country for the poor. The National Liberation Front’s leader, who went by Marcos, assured the Jesuit that the student army also had respect for different religious beliefs.

Later, the National Liberation Front asked the Jesuit to speak to the United States Congress to denounce theSomoza president of Nicaragua, whose regime had been supported by the American government for 45 years. “I told them, ‘To denounce the president was an important mission. It was a dangerous mission, and I accept the mission,’” he said.

After Cardenal’s hearing before Congress, President Jimmy Carter stopped providing aid to the dictatorial government in Nicaragua. Eighteen months later, the Somoza army was defeated.

Nicaragua began rebuilding, and Cardenal launched his literacy campaign. “Fifty percent of the country was illiterate,” he said. “Those who cannot read are poor twice. They are the poorest of the poor.”

Cardenal enlisted the help of 60,000 volunteers, which he notes is an impressive number for a country with a population of only three million, to live in the mountains and teach the peasant families to read and write. Although it was challenging, Cardenal credits the volunteers with the success of the campaign.

“What we did in the headquarters office is small compared with what we did with the young people in the mountains,” he said. “Despite threats from counter-revolutionaries, not one young person dropped out.”

Cardenal’s campaign raised the literacy rate in Nicaragua to 87 percent, and in 1980, the country was awarded UNESCO’s literacy award. Currently, the Jesuit runs a program to aid school systems in Nicaragua.

[The Heights]