On Thursday night (6), the Nicaraguan National Police, controlled by the Daniel Ortega regime, arrested Father Álvaro Toledo, parish priest of the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, which is located in the city of Ocotal. With Toledo’s arrest, the number of Catholic priests arrested by Nicaragua during the Ortega dictatorship rises to 12.
According to information from the independent newspaper La Prensa, the Nicaraguan police arbitrarily removed the priest from his residence, which is located in the department of Nueva Segovia, and disappeared with him. There is no official information about the priest’s whereabouts at this time.
Toledo was arrested hours after speaking out about the arrests of fellow priests in his homily.
According to the newspaper El Confidencial, during his homily on Thursday, before being arrested, Father Toledo had said that “our Diocese is running out of priests, we have no more priests”.
He had also left open the possibility of being arrested by the Ortega regime.
“The truth is that we already know that this could hit us at any moment, but we have peace and a clear conscience,” he said.
During the homily, Toledo had also asked for prayers for priests who are already detained in Nicaragua, such as José Iván Centeno and Julio Ricardo Norori. Both were arrested this October.
Lawyer and researcher Martha Patricia Molina, specialized in documenting the Nicaraguan regime’s attacks against Catholics, said on her official profile on X (formerly Twitter) that “the wave of kidnappings of priests continues” in Nicaragua.
“There is no national or international human power that can or wants to prevent it. The life of Father Toledo and others on the dictatorship’s kidnapping lists [de Daniel Ortega] is in danger. It’s a matter of hours before they kidnap others. The priests are alone, and the international community does not even want to open the doors to avoid arrest [deles],” she wrote.
Nicaragua currently has several Catholic priests in prison. The Diocese of Estelí alone, for example, already faces the incarceration of six priests, including that of its apostolic administrator, Bishop Rolando José Álvarez Lagos, previously sentenced to 26 years in prison for “treason”.
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