Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann

Through his father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann was descended from Nazario Escoto, acting president of Nicaragua in 1855.

Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann (February 5, 1933 – June 8, 2017) was an American-born Nicaraguan diplomat, politician and Catholic priest of the Maryknoll Missionary Society.

on February 5, 1933.

His father was Miguel Escoto Muñoz, a Nicaraguan diplomat.

His mother was Margarita Brockmann Meléndez.

He was then raised in Nicaragua but was sent back to the United States to begin his high school studies in 1947.

D'Escoto felt called to serve as priest and entered the seminary of the Maryknoll Missionary Society in 1953.

He was ordained a priest of the Society in 1961 before becoming engaged in politics.

He earned a Master of Science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism the following year, and was a key figure in the founding of the Maryknoll publishing house, Orbis Books, in 1970.

He served as an official of the World Council of Churches.

As an adherent of liberation theology, he secretly joined the Sandinistas.

D'Escoto formed the Nicaraguan Foundation for Integral Community Development (FUNDECI) in January 1973 to promote a nongovernmental response to the displacement of thousands in the December 1972 Managua earthquake.

D'Escoto first publicly expressed support for the FSLN as one of Los Doce, in October 1977, and was appointed foreign minister after the Sandinista triumph in 1979.

D'Escoto served as Nicaragua's foreign minister from 1979 to 1990.

He welcomed the news and said his punishment had been unfair.

D'Escoto, 81, had written to Pope Francis asking to be allowed to celebrate Mass before he died.

He served as foreign minister in Daniel Ortega's FSLN government from 1979 to 1990.

During a visit to Central America, Pope John Paul II publicly admonished him for his political activity.

In 1985, the pope denounced him and two other priests, the brothers Ernesto and Fernando Cardenal.

All three served in the Nicaraguan government but did not resign from office and so in violation of canon law.

D'Escoto was suspended by the Holy See in 1985, together with the two other priests.

As foreign minister, D'Escoto received the Lenin Peace Prize in 1985 and 1986 and the Thomas Merton Award in 1987.

On March 3, 1986, D'Escoto gave a speech on Nicaraguan television publicly insulting and condemning Cardinal Obando for not siding with the Sandinista regime against the Contras: "There is no word uttered by human mouth, no adjective that we could use to truly describe the horror produced by this brother of ours."

After the Sandinistas lost the 1990 Nicaraguan general election, D'Escoto led the Communal Movement but resigned that post in December 1991 after his support within the organization waned.

He supported Daniel Ortega against the Sandinista Renovation Movement dissidents.

The Latin American and Caribbean Group selected him as their candidate to become the president of the UN General Assembly.

In 1999, then Archbishop of Managua, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, criticized the priests who became involved with the Sandinistas and abandoned their priestly ministry for politics.

He said the priests never denounced the injustices that took place at the time.

As the President of the United Nations General Assembly from September 2008 to September 2009, he presided over the 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

On June 4, 2008, he was elected by acclamation to preside over 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly from September 2008 to September 2009.

Shortly after his election, D'Escoto stated during a press conference:"They elected a priest. And I hope no one is offended if I say that love is what is most needed in this world. And that selfishness is what has gotten us into the terrible quagmire in which the world is sinking, almost irreversibly, unless something big happens. This may sound like a sermon. Well, OK."

D'Escoto stated that addressing rising energy and food prices around the world would be priorities.

He was also nominated as Libyan Representative to the UN in March 2011.

On August 5, 2014, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had reinstated D'Escoto as a priest after he had been suspended for thirty years for taking up office in Nicaragua's left-wing Sandinista government.

D'Escoto had been banned from celebrating Mass by Pope John Paul II for defying a church ban on priests holding political office.

The suspension stayed in place until August 2014, when Pope Francis lifted it.

Early in the war, the Reagan administration perceived D'Escoto as a relative moderate who might break with the regime.

He died on 8 June 2017, having suffered a stroke several months earlier.

D'Escoto was born in Los Angeles, California.

He continued on as President of FUNDECI, which operates in several departments in Nicaragua until his death in 2017.