Monsignor Silvio Baez, auxiliary bishop of Managua, called on the powerful to renounce violence and learn from history, which teaches that cruelty leads to “self-destruction.” The bishop also denounced this day the manipulation of the laws that the powerful execute in order to “subdue the people.”
The message was sent during his homily this Sunday, February 19, days after the Nicaraguan regime exiled 222 political prisoners and, through a reform to the Political Constitutionwill take away the Nicaraguan nationality from this group, from Monsignor Rolando Alvarez— who is imprisoned in Managua — and 94 other citizens, including Bishop Báez.
«This call to love must be heard by the tyrants on duty who allow themselves to be carried away by their irrational ambitions, act with hatred, seek revenge and even manipulate the law and laws to do evil and subdue the people. History should teach them that, with their hatred, their cruelty and their violence, they are the ones who destroy themselves. No oppressor ever ends well, nor does any dictator triumph indefinitely,” stressed the monsignor, who has been in the United States, forced into exile since 2019.
The Catholic leader regretted that there are still “executioners and victims”, people who violently oppress the “weakest and most defenseless” through weapons, but stressed that returning the violence received is not the answer either because, in this way, “the evil continues to increase and its diabolical spiral continues to destroy individuals, families and entire societies.
Achieving a “genuine revolution”
Monsignor Silvio Baez He explained that in Jesus’ phrase: “To anyone who slaps you on the right cheek, give him the other as well”, the son of God is not proposing that we allow them to continue hitting us or be submissive or ignore injustices; Jesus proposes “a new style of reacting to offense, a new form of active resistance to evil and injustice (…) placing ourselves in a higher perspective, which goes beyond the logic of hatred and revenge.”
“We do not want an oppressor to take his (tyrant’s) place,” he added.
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He went on to explain that “to love the enemy is to renounce revenge and hatred.” Báez also urged avoiding differences and overcoming fanaticism so as not to give “strength to evil.”
“Only with a love similar to his (that of Jesus) will we make possible the only authentic and eternal revolution, the revolution of mercy,” he said.
also reminded Monsignor Rolando Alvarezwho, according to sources close to the Nicaraguan Catholic Church, is in a punishment cell in the “La Modelo” prison, in Tipitapa, Managua.
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He was sent there by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo after the also bishop of the diocese of Matagalpa refused to be exiled to the United States, while there are still political prisoners in Nicaragua.
Auxiliary Bishop Báez asked God to give Monsignor Álvarez “strength, health, hope and discernment in his Spirit; may he protect him from all evil and very soon we will see him free ».
