Tim Kaine’s Time With a Marxist Priest

IMAGE: The Daily Beast

Tim Kaine frequently talks about how his mission in Honduras in the early 1980s shaped his worldview. That trip included visits with a controversial priest who later disappeared.

By Betsy Woodruff | 2 October 2016

THE DAILY BEAST — In 1983—according to some accounts—a Honduran death squad backed by the Reagan administration tossed a Catholic priest out of a helicopter and to his death. The priest had once described himself as a “good Marxist,” and he had been the chaplain for a column of Cuban-trained communist guerillas trying overturn the country’s government.

Just three years before falling to his death, that priest met with Tim Kaine.

Today, that meeting may cause trouble for the Virginia senator. A conservative Catholic group is taking aim at Hillary Clinton’s running mate over the one part of his biography that generally appeals most to people of faith: his mission work in Honduras.

Kaine spent nine months working there with Jesuits from 1980 to 1981, and he frequently mentions his time there on the campaign trail. And he made it a focus of his speech at the Democratic National Convention. []

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