In an unusual gesture, the Pope referred during the New Year's Mass to the detention of priests and seminarians in Nicaragua, where the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has accelerated the persecution against members of the Catholic Church since December 20. . “Bishops and priests have been deprived of their freedom in recent days. I express to them, to their families and to the entire Church of the country, my closeness in prayer,” Francis said during the traditional Angelus prayer from the window of his office in the Apostolic Palace. “Let us pray for Nicaragua,” the Pope said. Thousands of faithful listened to him in St. Peter's Square. Francis called for peace and reconciliation and asked for “dialogue to overcome difficulties” for Nicaragua.
Last Thursday, the Nicaraguan regime detained Monsignor Carlos Áviles, vicar of the archdiocese of Managua, the last in a long list that includes 12 other priests and two seminarians that began last December 20, coinciding with the Christmas celebrations. Among those arrested are well-known priests, such as Monsignors Silvio Fonseca and Miguel Mántica, in addition to Áviles. There is also Father Pablo Villafranca. These arrests are added to the sentence of Bishop Rolando Álvarez to 26 years in prison for “treason to the country”, and that of the head of the diocese of Siuna, Isidro Mora Ortega.
“This week the Sandinista dictatorship has unleashed a fierce hunt against priests, taking several of them to prison, in addition to two bishops who were already imprisoned,” the auxiliary bishop of Managua, Silvio Báez, had denounced last week. exiled in the United States. “I beg the bishops and the episcopal conferences of the world not to abandon us at this moment, to pray for the Church of Nicaragua and to show solidarity and raise their voices denouncing this persecution of the dictatorship against our Church!” He added. This Monday, it was Pope Francis who responded to his request.
Only on December 30, in addition to Matica, priest Gerardo Rodriguez, Jader Hernández and Raúl Zamora, the latter parish priest of the Iglesia Divina Misericordia, the church that was attacked by Sandinista paramilitaries on July 13, 2018, were arrested. Now persecuted and arrested, they then participated as mediators in the failed national dialogue process between the Sandinista Government and the opposition.
Monsignor Silvio Fonseca, arrested on December 29, is critical of the Government, which he accuses of “promoting a hatred never seen before” against the Catholic Church, and of “depriving the Catholic people of being formed in their faith.” The Legal Defense Unit (UDJ), which defends political prisoners, warned that the Christmas arrests add to the sentence against Rolando Álvarez, who did not want to accept the exile ordered by Ortega last October to other members of the Church . That month, the regime released a dozen priests it held as political prisoners from prison and sent them on a plane to Rome. However, the expulsion of religious began in 2018 with Monsignor Báez, one of the most critical pastoral voices against the authoritarian drift and human rights violations in Nicaragua.
Nicaragua broke relations with the Holy See in 2023, after the expulsion a year before of the nuncio at that time, Waldamer Stanislaw Sommertag, in March 2022. In August of last year, the Government canceled the legal status of the Society of Jesus Association of Nicaragua. Ortega's argument was that the Jesuits “did not report their financial statements for the years 2020, 2021 and 2022.” A week earlier, the regime had confiscated the assets of the Central American University (UCA), administered by the religious order for more than 60 years in Nicaragua. “They had their board of directors expired since March 27, 2020,” he said in the decree.
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