The executive secretary and legal representative of the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights (Anpdh), Álvaro Leiva, reported that he has sent a letter to Pope Francis asking him to excommunicate the vice president of Nicaragua, Rosario Murillo, “for her fascist acts and diabolical practices.” in the country.
This Friday, July 29, through a video broadcast on social networks, the human rights defender maintained that he has made this request to His Holiness “so that his eyes focus on Nicaragua and his gaze can be in tune with the suffering that the Nicaraguan people have today in their long-awaited justice”.
Leiva assured that there is enough evidence and elements for the Ortega regime’s spokeswoman to be “excommunicated because she has caused the death of the souls of innocent hundreds of Nicaraguans.”
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The letter from the ANPDH raises with “concern” the violation of the right to religious freedom and the escalation of repression and direct attacks by the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship against the leaders of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua.
“This woman makes public use of a suigeneris religious syncretism (of her gender), which she uses at her convenience according to the political circumstances and that leads the population to a state of confusion, where it is validated, from the practice of witchcraft even the reading of a fragment of the sacred gospels, inducing the people to live in sin”, reads the letter.
The letter was sent on July 25 to Pope Francis, the highest representative of the Holy See in Rome, reported the defender.
Attacks on bishops and priests
In addition, Álvaro Leiva exposed before his holiness that the lives of some religious “are in danger” in Nicaragua, because the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship has escalated its persecution against the church and keeps two priests in jail.
Among the main Catholic leaders persecuted by the regime are: Monsignor Silvio Jose Baez Ortega, auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese of Managua, currently in exile; Mgr Juan Abelardo Mata Guevara, bishop emeritus of the Diocese of Estelí; Mgr Rolando Jose Alvarez Lagosbishop of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of Estelí, and the priest Edwin Heriberto Roman Calderonparish priest of the church of San Miguel Arcángel, in the San Miguel neighborhood of the city of Masaya.
“On these four priests, the danger to their lives and physical integrity is still alive, and an illegal arrest warrant without legal basis, which has been suspended, but could be reactivated at any time according to the will of Rosario María Murillo Zambrana,” details the statement. missive.
Likewise, the human rights defender denounced the arrests against the priest Manuel Salvador García, who in his first trial was sentenced to two years in prison for the alleged crime of threatening with a weapon, and in the second he was sentenced to one year and four months. imprisonment for physical violence and another similar sentence for psychological violence.
In the case of Monsignor José Leonardo Urbina, the Nicaraguan justice accuses him of allegedly raping a minor.
«As a practicing Catholic, a citizen of a country whose patron saint is the Blessed Virgin Mary, I make this extensive statement to you, so that you -as the highest leader of the Catholic Church- firmly denounce the situation in Nicaragua, and so that, particularly now, have frequent words of encouragement for the priests of your faith who have had the courage to remain on the ground, along with the other faithful – and are, therefore, persecuted, “the letter indicates.