About Ernesto Cardenal
Ernesto Cardenal Martínez was a Nicaraguan Catholic priest, revolutionary, poet, and politician. He was a liberation theologian and the founder of the primitivist art community in the Solentiname Islands, where he lived for more than ten years (1965–1977). A former member of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, he was Nicaragua's minister of culture from 1979 to 1987. He was prohibited from administering the sacraments in 1984 by Pope John Paul II, but rehabilitated by Pope Francis in 2019. At his request, Cardenal's remains were cremated and then buried in the community he founded on the Solentiname Islands. Cardenal sums up his later material in a PBS NewsHour interview: In the first place, one matures, and can write about things one couldn't before. He went to the Solentiname Islands, where he founded a Christian, almost-monastic, mainly-peasant community, which eventually led to the founding of the artists' colony. Cardenal was born into an upper-class family in Granada, Nicaragua.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.