Sandinistas, Church Clash on Drafting Student Priests

The longstanding conflict between Nicaragua’s Roman Catholic Church and the Sandinista government has flared up sharply with an argument over the military draft.

For the first time, youths studying for the priesthood have been inducted into the army. Church leaders have strongly protested the move, but the government has taken a tough stand.

“This is probably the tensest moment ever in Nicaraguan church-state relations,” a foreign diplomat who has monitored the conflict said at week’s end.

Since 1980, the year after the Sandinistas took power, Catholic bishops have become increasingly critical of the Marxist-led revolutionary government. Government officials have accused church leaders of aiding the revolution’s enemies.

The Sandinistas are fighting a guerrilla war against U.S.-supported rebels, known as contras, in Nicaragua’s rugged back country, and thousands of youths have been drafted.

About a month ago, six students at a seminary preparatory school in the city of Rivas were drafted, and the army recently inducted five more youths from a similar church school in the southern province of Rio San Juan.

According to Msgr. Bismarck Carballo, a church spokesman, the six Rivas draftees who were sent to a training base near the northern city of Ocotal have refused to wear military uniforms. The five Catholic churches of Rivas canceled Mass last Sunday in protest, and the city’s priests went to Ocotal to visit the six.

At least two of those priests were foreigners. In retaliation, Carballo said, the government immigration department called in about 20 foreign priests from Rivas and nearby cities with the apparent intention of expelling them from the country on grounds that they were meddling in political matters.

Bishop Pablo Vega, president of the Nicaraguan Bishops’ Conference, telephoned Interior Minister Tomas Borge in an effort to prevent any expulsions. Borge told him the priests would be reprimanded but not expelled, Carballo said.

The government has expelled 17 Catholic priests in the past three years, and the expulsions have been a major point of church-state conflict.

Carballo said President Daniel Ortega promised last December that seminarians would be exempt from the draft. But at a meeting of church and government representatives last week, Carballo said, government officials argued that the students were not actually seminarians because they were not attending the higher-level seminary in Managua that completes the candidates’ preparation for ordination.

Intentions Questioned

Carballo said that government officials accused priests at preparatory seminaries of protecting draft-dodgers who do not intend to become priests. The bishops insisted that the 11 draftees are candidates for the priesthood but, Carballo said, “the officials don’t accept the word of the bishops.”

On Wednesday, the Bishops’ Conference sent a telegram to Ortega complaining about the drafting of the seminarians and about the reprimand given to the foreign priests.

“These things are considered by the bishops as a way of intimidating the church, which increases rather that diminishes tensions and makes church-state talks more difficult,” the telegram said. But it added that the bishops are willing to continue discussions with the government.

Since last December, representatives of the bishops and the government have had at least eight meetings in what has been called a dialogue aimed at reconciliation among Nicaraguans. Little progress has been made, Carballo said.

Differ on Peace Talks

The government, he said, has insisted that the bishops condemn the Reagan Administration for supporting the contras against the Sandinistas. And the bishops have repeatedly proposed that the government hold peace talks with the contras, something the government says it will never do. Neither side has budged on those points.

Church leaders have also angered the government by opposing the military draft because it does not allow for conscientious objectors.

The expulsion of foreign priests also remains a festering issue. The bishops are insisting on the return of 10 who were expelled last year for alleged anti-Sandinista political activities.

The bishops also object to government censorship of the church radio station, Radio Catolica. The government has prohibited the station from broadcasting live Masses celebrated by Nicaragua’s Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo.

In his homilies, Obando has frequently criticized Sandinista policies, and he is widely regarded as the country’s only effective opposition figure.

Mass Broadcast Stopped

On Sept. 12, Radio Catolica started to broadcast a delayed tape of an Obando Mass in the province of Boaco, but armed troops of the Interior Ministry raided the station and interrupted the transmission. Obando complained to Interior Minister Borge, and sources said Borge told him that--”out of admiration” for the cardinal--delayed broadcasts of the Masses would be permitted in the future.

But on Sept. 25, when the station tried to broadcast a tape of a Mass celebrated by Obando in the province of Matagalpa, troops again stopped the transmission.

“The government doesn’t give explanations,” said Carballo, the director of Radio Catolica. He said the station will continue trying to broadcast the cardinal’s Masses.

Many Catholic leaders fear that Marxist-Leninists in the Sandinista leadership want to undermine the church’s influence with the people. “The government has a project, which is to install Marxism in Nicaragua, and the church has been the main impediment to carrying out the project,” Carballo said.

In a recent interview with a pro-Sandinista magazine, Borge accused the “reactionary religious sector” of conducting ideological warfare. “The church is a strong organization,” Borge said. “It has its generals, its task force leaders, . . . experts in using words, dedicated to the ideological struggle.”

Priests Are Divided

Not all Catholic priests accept the bishops’ position in the church-state conflict. Among them are those who belong to a Catholic movement called the Popular Church, which preaches so-called “liberation theology,” a blend of Christian doctrine, Marxist economics and revolutionary political ideas. The Popular Church’s motto is “Between Christianity and revolution, there is no contradiction.”

In a Sunday bulletin printed for distribution in churches this weekend, the Managua archdiocese said the Popular Church was created “to divide Catholics and uproot their faith.”

But Father Uriel Molina, a Franciscan priest who directs a pro-Sandinista think tank, said the Popular Church would like to see a reconciliation among Catholics and all Nicaraguans.

“No one is interested in provoking a division in the church,” Molina said in an interview Friday. But he said that reconciliation can come only if the church leaves the faithful free to choose sides politically.

“Faith is not naturally Sandinista or anti-Sandinista,” he said. “It is not correct in the name of faith to impose on us an anti-Sandinista ideology.”