The arrest this Friday of the Bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando Alvarezcritical of President Daniel Ortega, is framed as the most recent episode of the confrontation between the Catholic Church and the Nicaraguan Government.
To what was considered a “night kidnapping” are added the arrests of priests, the expulsion of an apostolic nuncio, the closure of an order of Mother Teresa of Calcutta and the raid by the Police of a curia of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which is suffering from a major onslaught from the government of Daniel Ortega due to his criticism of political management and the repression experienced by various sectors in the country.
The persecution against the Church is not an isolated phenomenon. In fact, 2022 has been characterized as one of the most repressive years in the history of Nicaragua, while Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, supported by the ruling Parliament, have managed to close hundreds of cultural spaces, medical, journalistic, among others.
So far this year, Parliament has outlawed and ordered the closure of more than 1,000 non-governmental organizations, adding a total of 1,268 since December 2018, the year in which a popular revolt became a demand for Ortega’s resignation, in power since 2007.
Among the organizations closed by the regime in July was the Association of the Missionaries of Charity, a religious group that was installed in 1988 and had been operating in the country since the visit of the Mother Teresa of Calcutta, in which Ortega himself received it and from which he highlighted “his Christian work.” Now, more than 30 years later, the president, who was re-elected in 2021 in elections considered illegitimate by international organizations, has declared an offensive against Catholics, even calling the bishops of the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference “terrorists.” (CEN).
One of its members, Bishop Rolando José Álvarez, was arrested yesterday along with seven of his collaborators, after the police forcefully entered the curia where he was already held two weeks ago. According to the authorities, he was accused by the police of “inciting hatred” in the country. The religious has been one of the staunchest critics of the political management, about which he has denounced that the ruling party “pretends a silent Church, does not want us to speak or denounce injustice.”
The president of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh), Vilma Núñez, told AFP that the prelate was taken “with violence” at dawn and transferred to Managua, the capital, from Matagalpa, to the north, the Police reported in a statement released this Friday.
“The bishop remains in house protection in this capital city” and was treated “with respect and observance of his rights,” the authorities defended in the letter.
Álvarez’s arrest is added to the arrest of the priest Óscar Danilo Benavidez Dávila, for whom the Prosecutor’s Office requested 90 days in prison in order to expand an investigation against him, for an alleged crime that is still unknown, for which there are already nine religious who are in police custody.
The voice of
the Nicaraguan Church is the most listened to
in the country and the only
who still denounces
authoritarianism from within
This repression comes after the expulsion of the Vatican representative in Nicaragua, the apostolic nuncio Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, in March, an action that the Holy See said it had “received with surprise and pain.”
According to a study by the Center for Transdisciplinary Studies of Central America (Cetcam), the Ortega government wants to force the Church to take one of these three options: “Silence in the face of the situation in the country, prison or exile in case it does not agree to lower your head.”
This after State-Church relations worsened since the 2018 strike, since now Ortega accuses the religious of supporting “a coup d’état” against him, even when the Church’s actors were sought by the Executive to mediate in the national dialogue.
“The Catholic hierarchy told Ortega and Murillo that the negotiations should go through an effective democratization in the country and the investigation of human rights violations that have been committed since the beginning of the protests. The regime saw this as a threat to its power,” Israel González, a journalist on Catholic issues in Nicaragua, tells EL TIEMPO.
Since then, adds the communicator exiled in Spain, the hostilities against the Church have only increased. Well, in addition to the arrests and expulsions of pastors, there has also been serious persecution against religious circles. In recent weeks, the government has ordered the closure of eight radio stations and three other Catholic television channels.
“The voice of the Nicaraguan Church is the most listened to in the country and the only one that still denounces authoritarianism from within. That is why the Ortega-Murillos see her as a potential enemy that is adding weight to the official narrative,” advocates González.
This situation, which puts not only Catholic institutions in check but also the parishioners themselves, has been a target of criticism against the Government of Nicaragua by the international community, especially by other organizations of the same religious nature. Despite foreign support for the religious, there is still one central figure who has remained silent in recent weeks: Pope Francis.
On Wednesday, 17 opposition organizations of the Ortega government asked the Supreme Pontiff for a statement in which he condemns the actions against the Church in Nicaragua.
“We pray for the good offices and the voice of denunciation and condemnation of His Holiness Pope Francis as pastor of his Church, in the face of the serious persecution that Nicaragua is experiencing today,” they cry out. There are even critics, such as the journalist Emmanuel Rincón, for whom his silence is “accomplice” and “shameful”, especially if one takes into account the important activity of the Pope to condemn events such as the war in Ukraine and the situation of “capitalist globalization”. ”.
“The ideological affinities of Pope Francis are sufficiently documented, and he has every right to have them, what is not right is to use the power of the Catholic Church to try to shape his Marxist agenda in the world, whitewashing the face of murderous regimes” , asserts Rincón in a column published in El Nacional.
To qualify this position, Hernán Olano, a Vatican expert and rector of Unicoc, affirms: “The Pope’s silence cannot be branded as a nod to the Ortega and Murillo regime.” However, he does admit that it is “inadmissible and strange”.
He adds that the Vatican could intervene with a firmer stance through the Organization of American States (OAS), but his delegate, for the moment, has only described the conditions as “worrying”.
According to the last census carried out in Nicaragua, citizens who consider themselves Catholic represent 58.5 percent of the 6.5 million inhabitants in the country. The Church, of course, is a figure that, although it is a space that remains firm, Olano considers, “it is a paranoia of the president and the vice president to believe that Catholics can organize violent groups against them.” Even more so when the 2018 crisis, which left more than 350 protesters dead and thousands injured, in addition to dozens of other detainees, demonstrated the judicial and armed power of the Ortega government, which remains firm in its repressive policy, increased in the last year.
DIEGO STACEY SALAZAR
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
TIME
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