The repressive escalation of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo against the Catholic Church forced four priests from the Diocese of Matagalpa, in northern Nicaragua, into exile. The lawyer Yader Morazán detailed, through his social networks, that the religious are: Uriel Vallejos, Vicente Martínez, Sebastián López and Mangel Hernández.
I rectify: Father Dani García is in hiding and does not answer calls, that is why even the closest nucleus believed that he had gone into exile, but based on these publications he sent the message saying that he has not yet left the country by paths, as they have done the others.
– Yader Morazán ⚖️ ?? (@YaderMorazan) September 1, 2022
Vallejos is the parish priest of the Divina Misericordia church in Sébaco; Martínez and López belong to the Santa Lucía church in Ciudad Darío; Hernandez led the San Juan Maria Vianney parish of Matagalpa.
In addition, the seminarian Carlos Mata, deacon of the Diocese of Granada, also reported, through social networks, that he had to leave Nicaragua due to the persecution of the Ortega-Murillo regime.
“Due to the madness of servile and fanatical people, I have had to leave and abandon the land where I was born, I ask for your prayers,” Mata wrote on his Twitter account.
The priest Vallejos was detained, on August 1, in the parish house of Jesús de la Divina Misericordia, in Sébaco, by agents of the National Police who kept the place surrounded.
The retention of the religious occurred after he was supported by parishioners to protect the equipment of Radio Católica de Sébaco, one of the ten stations closed by the regime to the Diocese of Matagalpa.
The Police, in an attempt to steal the radio equipment, violently occupied the Infant Jesus of Prague chapel and the Jesus of Divine Mercy Catholic temple, beating and detaining the parishioners who were praying and guarding the place to prevent the theft of the radio equipment and that the priest was assaulted.
Father Vallejos left the parish house on August 4thafter three days in which he was only fed with juices and yogurt, by a religious commission that came to take him and the parishioners who accompanied him.
On August 16, the regime’s police surrounded the religious temple directed by López and prevented the parishioners from entering. The priest he celebrated the mass that Tuesday in the atrium of the church, while the faithful participated in the Eucharist from the street, guarded by riot police.
On the church’s Facebook account, where the mass on August 16 was broadcast live, the emotional moment was seen in which López delivered the host to the parishioners through a perimeter mesh and, at the end of the Eucharist, the He exhorted them to continue praying, to have a lot of faith and that the Lord “is the solution of our nation.”
Two months of persecution against the Catholic Church
In the last two months, the Ortega and Murillo regime undertook a series of repressive acts against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, leaving so far: seven priests, two seminarians and a layman imprisoned, 18 religious expelled from the country, a bishop under house arrest and the closure of a dozen religious media.
The priest Manuel Salvador García Rodríguez, parish priest of the Jesús de Nazareno church —also known as El Calvario—, in Nandaime, Granada, was the first religious to face the justice of the regime, being sentenced on June 22 to two years in prison. for the alleged crime of threatening five people with a knife.
The 26 August, Monsignor José Leonardo Urbina, parish priest of the Perpetuo Socorro de Boaco church, he became the second priest convicted of Ortegaism. The religious, detained since July 13, was accused of the alleged crime of sexual abuse and minor psychological injuries to the detriment of a minor under 14 years of age.
Father Óscar Benavidez Dávila, from the Holy Spirit Church of Mulukukú, in the North Caribbean of Nicaragua, on August 14 was the third priest detained by the regime’s Police.
The Public Ministry requested, on August 15, a term of up to 90 days in prison to extend the alleged “investigation” against the priest, in which the state considers itself “victim and offended” by the actions of the religious, but in the court file does not specify the crime he allegedly committed.
Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Estelí, was arrested and placed under house arrest on August 19, after 15 days locked up by the Police in the Episcopal Curia of Matagalpa. The same day, They were detained and taken to the Directorate of Judicial Assistance, known as El Chipote, the priests Ramiro Tijerino, José Luis Díaz, Sadiel Eugarrios and Raúl González; the seminarians Darvin Leyva and Melkin Sequeira, and the cameraman Sergio Cárdenas, who accompanied Álvarez during the running of the bulls.
