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In 1956 Cardenal experienced his religious conversion. “God simply showed himself to me as love,” was how he explained it. In May 1957 he became a novice at the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, in the US, under the guidance of the poet and philosopher Thomas Merton. His life there is reflected in the collection of poems Gethsemani, Ky, published in 1960. The stern Trappist regime took its toll on Cardenal’s health, however, so that after two years he moved on to a Benedictine monastery in Colombia. He was ordained in 1962. His major book of poems from these years is Zero-Hour, published in Mexico in 1960, as were his Epigramas the following year.
Most gratifyingly for Cardenal, in February 2019 Pope Francis lifted the ban on him practising as a priest, declaring in a personal letter to him that he was “absolved of all canonical censure”.