Berkley Center

Padre Fernando Cardenal, S.J. is the national director of Fe y Alegría in Nicaragua, where he lives and works on the campus of the Universidad Centroamericana. After becoming a Jesuit in 1969, Cardenal lived in Columbia for several years before returning to his native Nicaragua. Cardenal was the minister of education from 1984 to 1990 in Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolutionary government. He previously led the National Crusade for Literacy in 1980, a national effort of youth volunteers who taught over 500,000 people to read. Tense relations between the Vatican and the Sandinista government resulted in Cardenal being expelled from the Society of Jesus in 1984 for refusing to give up his government position; he was reinstated twelve years later.