In the homily this Sunday, March 19, from the Metropolitan Cathedral, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes, Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Managua, asked San José to free the Church from “all evil.”
In commemoration of the festivities of Saint Joseph, the cardinal recalled that “Saint Joseph was a humble man (…) and was called to care solely and exclusively for the son of God and our mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary.”
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In reference to the context in which the Catholic Church of Nicaragua is experiencing due to the siege and repression at the hands of the Daniel Ortega regime, the prelate sang the song of “Saint Joseph, great protector of the universal Church”: «Saint Joseph, great protector of the universal Church, always deliver us from all evil».
“We hope that all the requests that we make – to San José – become a reality (…) because the word of God goes against everything the world says and there is a confrontation because they do not want to accept the work of the Lord,” he said. the religious.
In reference to the injustice that the country is experiencing, the Catholic faithful asked for “those who live in the blindness of lack of culture and ignorance without the ability to think and decide due to lack of due light.”
Alluding to the powers of the State of Nicaragua, participants in the repression ordered by the dictator Daniel Ortega, the faithful prayed “for so many blind people who do not want to see and cling to their blindness.”
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Brenes’s preaching comes at a time when the Nicaraguan government continues its wave of repression against the Catholic Church, where Ortega decided to break diplomatic relations with the Vatican after statements by Pope Francis who called his regime a “rude dictatorship.”
The Nicaraguan dictator persists in keeping three priests locked up, including Monsignor Rolando Alvarez, whom he sentenced to 26 years in prison, plus the loss of his nationality for alleged conspiracy against the homeland.
At the close of today’s mass, the parishioners congratulated the Archbishop of Managua on his 35 years of episcopal ordination. Despite the repression against the Church, the prelate has avoided expressing himself openly in the face of the injustice experienced by all the Nicaraguan clergy.
