2024-01-01 02:25:00
Leopoldo Brenes, archbishop of Managua (REUTERS/Oswaldo Rivas)
The archbishop of Managua, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes, called this Sunday for the unity of the Catholic Church of Nicaragua, following the arrest of at least 13 priests since December 20.
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“I wanted to prepare a small message for the whole family, a message of encouragement, of hope, above all a message in which we unite strongly in prayer,” said Brenes in the cathedral of Managua.
“To the families and communities that at this moment feel the absence of their priests or are experiencing other types of pain, I want to express my closeness. “It is time to seek together in prayer the consolation of God and, in ecclesial unity, our strength,” he added.
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At least thirteen priests have been arrested since December 20 in Nicaragua, including a bishop, amid strong tension between the Catholic Church and Daniel Ortega’s regime, according to religious, humanitarian activists, opponents and national media in the country. exile.
“Let us ask the good God for the grace of our wisdom and that our words and actions bear witness to that patience that achieves everything and that the light of Jesus helps us all to find paths of concord and fraternity,” added the Nicaraguan archbishop.
The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo escalates repression once morest the Catholic Church in Nicaragua (AP Photo/Alfredo Zúñiga)
Neither the Ortega regime nor the Nicaraguan police have commented on the allegations.
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The relationship between the Church and the government deteriorated amid the 2018 protests, following Ortega accused religious people of supporting opponents in what he considered an attempted coup d’état.
The protests with road blockades and clashes between opponents and supporters of the government left more than 300 dead following the brutal repression of the regime, according to UN data.
Bishop Silvio Báez, who left Nicaragua in 2019, denounced on Saturday the “persecution” once morest the Church and asked for the solidarity of the bishops of the world and the international community in the face of the arrest of the religious.
“They are not prisoners or criminals but men of God (…); We are proud of them and we will be with them with prayer until they achieve their freedom,” Báez said in a video on social networks on Saturday night.
“We ask the international community to be more effective in its pressure” once morest the Nicaraguan regime, added the bishop, who hours before denounced on his X account (formerly Twitter) “a fierce hunt” once morest religious people.
Nicaraguan bishop Rolando Álvarez was sentenced to 26 years in prison for the crime of “treason to the country; he has been detained for more than 500 days (EFE/Jorge Torres)
Among those detained are Monsignors Silvio Fonseca, family vicar of the Archdiocese of Managua; Miguel Mántica, from the San Francisco church, also in the capital; and Marcos Díaz, from the diocese of León (northwest), according to these sources.
Priests Gerardo Rodríguez, Mykel Monterrey and Raúl Zamora, who provide religious services in churches in Managua, were also arrested, said Nicaraguan media published in Costa Rica.
These arrests are in addition to those of Bishop Isidoro Mora and two seminarians on December 20, which were followed in the last week by those of the Vicar General of Managua Carlos Avilés and the priests Héctor Treminio, Fernando Calero and Pablo Villafranca.
The newspaper La Prensa added among those detained the priest Jader Hernández, parish priest of a church in Managua.
On Saturday night, Molina said on the social network
The Nicaraguan human rights activist Bianca Jagger urged in “Don’t abandon them, they are in danger and they need you SOS,” she wrote.
The auxiliary bishop of Managua, Monsignor Silvio Báez, denounces that the “oppressors” live “closed to the word of God” (EFE/ Jorge Torres)
Last Wednesday, the vice president and wife of Daniel Ortega, Rosario Murillo, called “devils” the religious people who, according to her, sow “hatred” in the country.
Rolando Álvarez, 57, was sentenced on February 10 to 26 years for treason, spreading false news and contempt, a day following he refused to leave for the United States along with 222 expelled imprisoned opponents.
Álvarez has preferred prison to exile and was not among the 12 priests freed in October and sent to Rome following a government agreement with the Vatican.
The opposition denounces that the Ortega regime seeks to dismantle the Nicaraguan Church (AP Photo/Alfredo Zúñiga)
In the midst of the growing persecution, several Nicaraguan opponents in exile condemned in recent hours the wave of arrests of priests by the Ortega Police. “The Ortega M. dictatorship intends to dismantle the Catholic Church,” said the legendary denationalized Sandinista guerrilla Dora María Téllez through the social network X.
Téllez, who was part of the first Sandinista Government (1979-1990), said that for Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, the traditional procession of Jesús Sacramentado, which is called for January 1 and is generally attended by thousands of Catholics, “it is a threat.”
“Fear and paranoia direct them,” said Téllez, for whom the “strategy of the Ortega Murillo dictatorship is to completely dismantle the Catholic Church” and “leave the parishes without priests.”
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