Cathedral’s Design Stirs Controversy : Architecture: Church under construction in Managua dubbed ‘House of Eros’ by critics who say its shape pays homage to female anatomy. Others in poor nation object to cost.

When the model for Managua’s new cathedral was unveiled, some Nicaraguans saw erotic curves of women’s breasts offered to the heavens.

Others saw cultural imperialism and millions of dollars ill-spent in a city where thousands live in cardboard and tin shacks.

But still others saw a long-awaited home for the country’s Roman Catholic majority, unsheltered since a 1972 earthquake brought down the roof of Managua’s lake-side cathedral.

With the help of a U.S. pizza magnate, the $4.5-million cathedral is slowly rising from the dust of a Managua lot and local church leaders hope it will be inaugurated by Pope John Paul II in October.

Building a new cathedral was not a priority in the years following the earthquake that killed some 10,000 Managuans and leading up to the 1979 insurrection that swept the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front into power.

The 1980s saw relations sour between the Sandinistas and the Roman Catholic hierarchy, which the leftist government accused of supporting the U.S.-financed anti-Sandinista Contra rebels.

But church-state relations blossomed after the Sandinistas lost the elections in 1990 and devout Catholic Violeta Chamorro took over as president.

More than 130 workers last August began construction of the huge structure set between two shopping centers--on land donated by the government--after Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo secured the support of Tom Monaghan, owner of the Domino’s Pizza chain and the Detroit Tigers baseball team.

Monaghan, a Catholic, has agreed to match every dollar raised in Nicaragua toward building the new cathedral with $5 of his own or collected by his fund-raisers. While church supporters struggle to come up with their part of the cash, controversy has arisen not only about money but over the cathedral’s design by renowned Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta.

Some ridicule the design, saying its 63 small domes and a 115-foot bell tower seem to pay homage to specific parts of the female and male anatomy.

“A roof of reunited, joined, promiscuous, concupiscent breasts proclaims to the heavens . . . that pleasure for pleasure’s sake is a reality, and not just the simple and irrational perpetuation of the species,” lampooned former Sandinista official Augusto Zamora in the weekly Gente magazine.

Zamora dubbed the new building “The Cathedral of Eros” and sarcastically thanked the church for granting “a cathedral to a city in ruins and drowning in misery.”

Others said the cathedral will resemble an Islamic mosque and that Legorreta’s eclectic design is alien to Nicaragua. Some also criticize Monaghan’s decision to choose a Mexican and not a Nicaraguan architect.

“The design has nothing to do with the local surroundings,” said Porfirio Garcia, an architect and art history professor at Managua’s Jesuit-run Central American University. “It’s like (Legorreta) drew it up on the airplane.”

But Obando y Bravo defends the design, domes and all.

“The domes are going to be seen from below, not above,” he said during a recent visit to the construction site. “It’s going to be very beautiful.”

Legorreta’s project manager Miguel Almaraz said the design “will be something that will last, not just a fashion.” He said recent adjustments have been made to the plans to conform with the local environment, including the addition of an air-conditioning system to cut Managua’s stifling heat.

Obando y Bravo said $560,000 has been spent so far on the cathedral. Despite marginally successful fund-raisers--including a baseball game featuring the Tigers’ former great, Al Kaline--he said he is confident that “providence, our friends and our people” will raise the money to finish the project.

Msgr. Eddy Montenegro, head of the cathedral’s finance committee, said the project would soon run out of funds. Local backers were studying “various alternatives” for new fund-raisers, he said.