Father Enrique Martínez Gamboa, pastor of the Santa Martha Church, of the Archdiocese of Managua, was kidnapped on the afternoon of Thursday, October 13, Father Uriel Vallejos denounced on his Twitter social network account.
The priest Martínez Gamboa joins the list of priests imprisoned by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in the context of repression against the Catholic Church.
“Yesterday at 5:00 pm, the parish priest of the Santa Martha Parish, Managua, was kidnapped. Father Enrique Martínez G. The priests and the Catholic Church demand the liberation and the cessation of the persecution against the Church and the clergy. Justice, freedom and democracy!” the priest wrote on his social network account.
Father Martínez Gamboa wrote several opinion articles that were published in the newspaper La Prensa in past years, according to files available on the newspaper’s website.
“In Nicaragua there is a vacuum, not of power, because this is clearly manifested in the crudest, cynical and manipulative authoritarianism, but in a lack of response to the pressing needs of Nicaraguan citizens,” the priest wrote in 2014 in a article entitled “And where is the pilot?”.
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In that article, Father Martínez affirms that “the people are not informed of anything, they are not given any answer despite the fact that they were the ones who put the more than 50,000 dead in the last war and surely it will be that same people who are it will demand another quota of lives, of blood, in the event of a new massive uprising».
A video of Father Gamboa went viral on social networks when he took the microphone at the end of the 2018 Mother’s Day march outside the Central American University (UCA).
In the midst of the repression exerted by the Police a few meters from the place, the priest launched an encouraging speech that ignited the spirit of the population that was protesting in demand for justice.
“Nicaraguans are the majority, we have a clean heart, not blood-soaked hands like others. Don’t cower, don’t cower. Long live Nicaragua! Out with the murderous couple, out with the miserable murderers, out, out, out!” said the priest.
