The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo prohibited at least 3,176 processions to the Catholic Church in the period of Holy Week this year 2023, despite this, parishioners and non-believers were present in the parishes and ” they packed” all the religious services that were scheduled for this major week.
for the journalist israel gonzalez espinozaspecialized in religious issues, the support of believers and non-believers for the Catholic Church symbolizes yet another defeat for the Ortega dictatorship.
“First of all, what has taken place this Holy Week is a true civic, peaceful resistance on the part of the country’s Christians, crowding all the religious services in all the parishes of Nicaragua. I believe that the regime has made a mistake again, prohibiting religious processions,” Espinoza said in an interview for the podcast NOW of Article 66.
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Likewise, the journalist pointed out that the Nicaraguan parishioners have felt the prohibition that the regime has imposed on the Church not to carry out any type of procession as “an attack on their faith.”
«Processions are a very characteristic element of Holy Week and people have felt it as an attack not only on the Catholic Church or on the hierarchy of the Church, but on the faith of the believing people. And that is why even many people who are not believers or who do not openly sympathize with the Church have gone to religious services, precisely to show solidarity with this completely unfortunate action, of a regime that does not stop executing actions that discredit it internationally. , held.
He stressed that “if there is something that Nicaraguans have, it is that they are a believing people, a people for the most part Catholic, but there are also evangelicals who have spoken out against these obstacles to religious freedom.”
“Not only are they attacking religious who have given a critical word regarding the government’s authoritarian, arbitrary and completely illegal actions, but now they have also gone head-on against popular religiosity,” he added.
For her part, the lawyer Martha Patricia Molina noted, in the podcast NOW of Article 66that “this year has been catastrophic for the Catholic Church, since 3,176 popular piety activities have been prohibited, only in the period of Holy Week.”
Faced with this situation, Molina highlighted that there is something “that no dictatorship can control and that is the faith of the Catholic laity”, who ignored the threats and prohibitions of the Ortega regime, “and were present in all the activities that took place carried out within each parish”.
“Others logically challenged the dictatorship more and went out to the processions, but they were repressed and this time not for protesting civically as we did in April 2018, but for announcing their faith and praying in public,” he denounced.
Furthermore, the journalist israel gonzalez Returning to Pope Francis, he reiterated that the Ortega and Murillo dictatorship is acting with an evident imbalance, a point of view that he also shares millwho considers that these facts demonstrate the repression suffered by all the social sectors of the country, from which the Catholic Church does not escape.
