The request for the excommunication of the Church to the vice president of Daniel Ortega, Rosario Murillo, made by the president of the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights (ANPDH), Álvaro Leiva, to Pope Francis will not have a greater impact, he assured Article 66 the journalist specializing in religious issues Israel González Espinoza.
The communicator pointed out several ways in which a person can be excommunicated, one of them can be latae sententiae (automatic) at the time of committing the crime for which Canon Law imposes this penalty.
«Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, in fact, and we abide by Canon Law, they are excommunicated because they are people who have persecuted the Church, who have carried out a campaign of hatred against the Church. What they did in Diriamba, hit the bishops. The people who did it and the people who ordered it are also excommunicated. Hitting a bishop is, in fact, an excommunication », he referred.
Related news: ANPDH asks the Vatican to excommunicate Rosario Murillo for “her diabolical practices”
González Espinoza explained that in the past the Church did excommunicate some politicians such as the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro when he proclaimed Marxism as a doctrine on the island.
“Obviously the Vatican excommunicated him and did not revoke the excommunication. He died excommunicated. This obeyed more to a logic of other times. Since Vatican II no one has been literally excommunicated », he points out.
Vatican handles situation in Nicaragua with “prudence”
The Catholic journalist appreciated that Leiva’s request is merely political rather than religious and does not believe that it will have a greater impact due to the Vatican’s position of “extreme prudence” with the crisis in Nicaragua and does not want, in some way, to lose the ” little communication» with the Nicaraguan dictatorship.
“The Vatican, in the current circumstances, is not excommunicating anyone. The validity that this would have is that they would listen to the ANPDH, but as I have seen the situation, the Vatican is in a situation of extreme prudence in the Nicaraguan case, it seems to me that it will not bear fruit. This (the request for excommunication) is more about the political issue than about the correct effectiveness that it will have », he pointed out.
He added that the Holy See would not want to further expose the situation of the Nicaraguan Church that is undergoing the imprisonment of two priests, the siege of parish churches, the silence of the bishops and the general persecution of priests.
The request of ANPDH
On July 25, the ANPDH sent a letter to Pope Francis asking him to excommunicate Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo “for her fascist acts and diabolical practices” in the country.
The human rights defender maintained the request to His Holiness is “so that his eyes focus on Nicaragua and his gaze can be in tune with the suffering that the Nicaraguan people have today in their long-awaited justice.”
Leiva affirmed that there is enough evidence and elements for the Ortega regime’s spokeswoman to be “excommunicated because she has caused the death of the souls of innocent hundreds of Nicaraguans.”
The letter from the ANPDH raises with “concern” the violation of the right to religious freedom and the escalation of repression and direct attacks by the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship against the leaders of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua.
