By Rita McInerney

Help is needed by the suffering people of Nicaragua – for doctors to care for the sick, engineers to build roads and volunteers to build houses – according to Father Joseph Fahy, C.P., recently returned from a two-week visit to the troubled Latin American nation.

Fluent in Spanish, he was one of two translators among the 17 people who made the trip from Atlanta under the auspices of Witness for Peace, an interfaith organization committed to nonviolence and the end to U.S. intervention in Central America. Father Fahy works with the Hispanic Apostolate in the Archdiocese of Atlanta and has made Latin American theology and history areas of special study.

He decided to go to Nicaragua because of his awareness of the suffering history of the nation, the uniqueness of the revolution, with its high toll of human lives, which overthrew the Somoza dictatorship, what is being attempted to create a new society, and the role of the divided church. He was pleased to go with an ecumenical group which included several ministers and two Buddhists from New York, he says.

In Nicaragua, he says, he saw some positive aspects of the Sandinista regime, “the tremendous effort to supply medical care, education, running water and electricity to the remote areas” of the underdeveloped country with a population of three million people. Much remains to be done, with most of the people, even in the capital city of Managua, without running water.

There is not universal support of the regime, he found in his travels throughout the country. One of the chief reasons, he says, is the military conscription which interrupts the lives of young men and casts them in the soldier role with its constant danger of death.

Another reason is that many people haven’t seen any radical changes, especially in an improved standard of living. “Where we were you have people against the contras but not for the Sandinistas,” he says.

The Atlantans talked to an American who had lived with the contras for five days. The man spoke of the constant tension of men separated from their families and living in fear of being discovered and shot at by Sandinista troops.

There is no expectation that the contras can defeat the Sandinistas. What they do is disrupt and tie up the army, keep the government spending mainly on defense, instead of building up an infrastructure so necessary to developing the country, he explained to the visitors.

One of the regions that the Atlanta delegation visited with their American escorts from Witness for Peace in Nicaragua was Nueva Guinea, a town of about 10,000 in an area heavily infested by ARDE, a contra force led by Eden Pastora, a former Sandinista hero who last week requested asylum in Costa Rica.

Several rebel groups are referred to by the term contras. These anti-Sandinista guerrilla forces are generally based along the Nicaragua border near Costa Rica or Honduras. The largest insurgent group is known as the Nicaraguan Democratic Force and is based along the border in Honduras.

Father Fahy stayed with a Catholic peasant family, sleeping in a hammock and sharing their simple life style. Their house had no running water. There was one priest in the town, a Capuchin from North America who was not there when the delegation was visiting. Father Fahy did meet a permanent deacon who had two children abducted and killed by the contras. When the Atlanta priest asked him if he was able to minister to people in the remote areas he replied that he couldn’t afford to because of the danger after what had happened to his two children.

In Nueva Guinea the group met two Brazilian sisters who told them the revolution is doing much for the people. They support many of its positive aspects and feel freer to exercise their ministry.

In Jacinto Vaca, a colonia (resettlement hamlet) about an hour’s travel from Nueva Guinea, the arrival of a priest was cause for joy among the people. The Atlanta group arrived Sunday morning and soon after word was spread around the countryside by men on horseback that a priest would celebrate Mass. Father Fahy said about 50 or 60 people attended that evening. It was for him, a “very moving experience.”

“The people might see a priest three or four times a year. They have a right to the liturgy. The church must face the profound problem that people are not getting the sacraments,” he continued.

Members of the Atlanta delegation learned early this week that Jacinto Vaca was attacked last Saturday, May 17, by contras who took seven West Germans as hostages. The West Germans had come to Nicaragua to build homes for the people in the resettlement hamlet. The hamlet had been attacked twice previously and nine people killed. While the Atlanta group was in Jacinto Vaca a memorial service was held for the nine victims of the guerrillas.

Churches are well attended in Managua, with worshipers crowding both the churches holding to the traditional ties with the Vatican and lead by the ranking prelate, Cardinal Obando Bravo; and the churches where priests favor the Sandinista regime. The cardinal is strongly opposed to the Marxist-Leninism leaning of the Sandinistas and has charged that harassment is being conducted against the church, chiefly through censorship of the Catholic press and radio. It is said by many that the cardinal and the Pope are the two most popular men in the nation where 80 percent of the people are Roman Catholic.

While in the capital city, Father Fahy attended Sunday evening Mass at the church of Santa Maria de Los Angeles, whose pastor, Father Uriel Molina, played a major role during the Samoza dictatorship in the intellectual formation of Sandinista leaders. Father Molina’s church is considered the most prominent of the “popular” churches in the nation and the Sunday evening Mass is well attended by tourists and other foreigners. Father Fahy met and talked with Father Molina who also edits the magazine “Amanecer,” which preaches liberation theology and prints favorable articles on the regime.

“The popular church,” he was told in Managua, “doesn’t mean it is against the poor. It wants to be open, to identify with the poorest of the poor in line with the Meddellin declaration of Latin American churchmen in 1979 which included the preferential option for the poor.”

The Nicaraguans he met insist that their Catholic faith is their best defense against the Marxist-Leninism ideology of the Sandinistas that the Reagan government claims will spread to the border of the U.S. “We are a religious people and we are not going to allow our country to become a second Cuba. We are far stronger than Cuba (in faith),” they told Father Fahy.

He came back with the impression that there is fear of going too far with that ideology, that the Soviet Union would be wary of making the country a second Cuba because of the expense to Moscow and with the knowledge that the U.S. would not tolerate such a move.

But there is wide resentment of the American government’s interference. “Why does Reagan think he can interfere with us?” is a question the Atlanta group was frequently asked. There is anger over the U.S. trying to dictate what kind of government is best for the Nicaraguans.

“We have meddled in Nicaraguan affairs since it became a nation in 1821, have sent the Marines in several times. (Augusto) Sandino was a nationalist, not a Marxist. The people we spoke to feel that through our policies we have contributed to the town to the Soviet Union,” Father Fahy commented.