After the latest attacks perpetrated by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, at least six priests were forced to leave Nicaragua for fear of being the next to be imprisoned.
According to the former official of the Judiciary, Yader Morazán, the priests who went into exile are: Fr. Uriel Vallejos, Pbro. Vicente Martinez, Fr. Sebastian Lopez, Pbro. Mangel Hernandez and Fr. Danny Garcia.
For his part, Deacon Carlos Mata, of the Diocese of Granada, reported that due to threats from “servile and fanatical people” he was forced to leave his homeland.
Related news: Priest flees from Nicaragua in the face of Ortega’s attack against the Church, reports organization
“Dear brothers, from the depths of my heart I have loved my country, but I inform you that due to the madness of servile and fanatical people, I have had to leave and abandon the land that saw me born, I ask for your prayers,” he wrote. religious in your account Twitter.
Recently Gonzalo Carrión, defense attorney for the Nicaraguan Never Again Human Rights Collective, confirmed to the team of Article 66 that they have documented the case of a Nicaraguan priest who went into exile and without specifying figures, he explained that there are more cases of priests in this same situation.
“We have documented a case as a Collective and we know that there are more priests, in forced displacement,” said Carrión.
The lawyer pointed out that the prelates are leaving the country because there is religious persecution in Nicaragua. “The facts speak for themselves,” he stressed.
Since the first of August, the Catholic Church has been the object of new attacks by the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship. The Sandinista administration ordered the closure of at least 10 religious stations, banished one of the choristers from the Diocese of Matagalpa, keeps Monsignor Rolando Álvarez under house arrest and has at least 10 priests deprived of their liberty.
Faced with this situation of religious persecution, the political analyst Israel Lewites argued that the Ortega-Murillo regime is telling the ecclesiastical authorities “that no matter who you are, in Nicaragua there is silence inside or you suffer the consequences, the consequences are kidnapping, exile or death.”
