We can hope that D’Escoto, who wants to be called Padre Miguel, has repented. He wrote to Pope Francis requesting a pardon. His pro-communist political activities in the 1980s (he disobeyed Rome by accepting a foreign minister position under Castro’s friend Daniel Ortega) merited his suspension from priestly ministry. D’Escoto also served once as an official with the World Council of Church, a KGB front organization. Maryknoll’s Orbis Books, which he co-founded with Philip Scharper, was shot through with Marxist liberation theology and religious syncretism. Under the guise of “helping the hungry and poor” Orbis’ publications undermined the Catholic Faith and invented a revolutionary false-Christ who was not God-Incarnate, but a political activist. Ortega himself, once pro-abortion, changed his view and in his second term as president helped outlaw all abortions in Nicaragua. I do not know anything more about Ortega, whether or not he has renounced Marxism, nor do I know anything about D’Escoto’s present state of soul. If he is truly repentant that would be wonderful. However, he has not severed his ties with the pro-abortion UN. He served as president of the U.N. General Assembly from 2008-2009. And he has not, publicly, trashed his Lenin Peace Prize award.
National Catholic Reporter: UNITED NATIONS — The short, round, elderly man in the gray, striped suit greets diplomats, opens a conference on world hunger, holds a midafternoon press conference and presides daily over the work of the 192-member U.N. General Assembly.
He also answers to and prefers to be called “Father” or “Padre Miguel” over “Mr. President” or “Your Excellency.”
For the past seven months, Maryknoll Fr. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann has served as president of the world’s largest global forum, the U.N. General Assembly, at its New York headquarters. Last spring the Group of Latin American and Caribbean States within the United Nations unanimously chose the former foreign minister of Nicaragua as president. D’Escoto will hold the post throughout the United Nations’ 63rd session, which closes in September. Read more here.
