Much of his poetry, though, was intimate: love poems that recalled the longings of his youth, finely wrought images of city lights at dusk or his famous “Prayer for Marilyn Monroe,” in which he describes how Monroe was found on her deathbed in 1962, “like someone wounded by gangsters/stretching out his hand to a disconnected telephone.”

Fascinated by evolution and its lessons for politics, Father Cardenal in the 1980s began to incorporate science into his poetry. He developed the theme until the end of his life, marveling at the origins of the universe and the mysteries of DNA — sources of awe that in his vision brought people closer to God.

“In this monumental vision, everything merges and condenses,” the Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez wrote in the introduction to Father Cardenal’s anthology “Ninety at Ninety,” which was published in Spanish in 2014. “Not only do the poet’s intimate personal experience and the scientific exploration of the heavens enter into the mystical, so do the memories of his own past.”

The most recent complete collection of Father Cardenal’s poetry published in English was “Pluriverse: New and Selected Poems,” (2009, edited and translated in part by Jonathan Cohen).

Closing the volume was the poem “Stardust,” Father Cardenal’s meditation on death. It concludes:

And the galaxy was taking the shape of a flower

the way it looks now on a starry night.

Our flesh and our bones come from other stars

and perhaps even from other galaxies,

we are universal,

and after death we will help to form other stars