The Reverend Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann M.M. |
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President of the United Nations General Assembly | |
In office September 16, 2008 – September, 2009 |
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Preceded by | Srgjan Asan Kerim |
Succeeded by | Ali Abdussalam Treki |
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Ambassador to the UN | |
In office 29 March 2011 – 2011 |
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Succeeded by | Abolished |
Foreign Minister of Nicaragua | |
In office 1979–1990 |
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Personal details | |
Born |
Los Angeles, California, United States |
February 5, 1933
Nationality | Nicaraguan |
Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann M.M. (born February 5, 1933) is a Nicaraguan diplomat, politician and Catholic priest of the Maryknoll Missionary Society. 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. He was also nominated as Libyan Representative to the UN in March 2011.
D'Escoto was born in Los Angeles, California, in the United States. on February 5, 1933. 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 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. Today, he continues as President of FUNDECI, which operates in several departments in Nicaragua.
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 government jobs. 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 dies.[3]