The migratory crisis, which has meant the departure of more than 200,000 nationals of the country in the last two yearsis “a drama that challenges us” according to the bishops of the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua (CEN) who put their concerns at the top of their advent message, published in their Facebook page last November 16.
In a two-page document, the bishops show their concerns about the social, political, and economic events “of our homeland”, however, they kept silent about the fierce persecution of the Daniel Ortega regime against the Catholic Church that it maintains under a regime of house by prison in Managua at Bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando Álvarez, since last August 19.
Seven bishops, led by Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes and Monsignor Carlos Enrique Herrera, vice president and president of the CEN respectively, explained that as a Church they are in a synodal process due to the guidelines of Pope Francis and encouraged that “we should all have the chance to develop and make Nicaragua a country of brothers”.
“Let us always seek to do good, so that each time we speak more as brothers and leave out individualism. According to the pastoral priorities of our Episcopal Conference, we seek to deepen our demands for our personal and pastoral conversion, to live up to the mission that the Lord has entrusted to us as a Church. We call our people to participate in this search and to unite in prayer for the good development of our five pastoral priorities in our ecclesiastical province”, the statement stated.
Before the publication of this ecclesial pronouncement, a new study on the attacks of the dictatorship on the Church was released, prepared by the researcher Martha Patricia Molina, a Nicaraguan lawyer who stated that the religious were the objects of 396 attacks since 2018, giving a intensification of state repression during 2022.
In addition to the kidnapping of Bishop Álvarez, according to the report Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church?, religious have also been the object of 14 criminal proceedings. There are currently seven priests in jail or sentenced, two seminarians and a deacon in prison, to which we must add the situation of the Auxiliary Bishop of Managua, Silvio Báez, in exile since 2019 on the Pope’s recommendation after threats from Ortega fanatics.
Ortega too expelled last March to the Apostolic Nuncio and in July to 18 nuns of the Order of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta, it has prevented a priest from leaving the country and eight others from entering in a series of actions that correspond with an official hate speech, in which Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo—his wife—call the priests “coup plotters” and accuse them of having instigated the assassination of the tyrant in 2018.
Four years ago, in fact, the Catholic Church denounced the repression of the State against the citizens and received its victims in the parishes, they were promoters of a dialogue in which the executive promised not to continue attacking the citizens, which that never fulfilled
Currently in Nicaragua there are more than 200 political prisoners, imprisoned in the worst possible conditionsaccording to their relatives and the human rights organizations that have denounced the isolation to which they are subjected and the torture conditions that the authorities of the regime have imposed on them.
According to the bishops, the season of Advent—begins on November 27—is characterized by “watchful waiting,” that is, a time of hope and vigilance, repentance, forgiveness, and joy. Contrary to this stage of silence, in the face of the resurgence of repression, Catholic leaders have been a voice permanently denouncing human rights violations and have ensured respect for institutions, as they have expressed in past pastoral letters.
Cardinal Brenes, Archbishop of Managua, recently traveled to Rome to meet with Pope Francis. In his public statements, he insisted on the need to maintain a dialogue with the executive, however, his most critical pointed out that the executive has intensified the repression against priests, which has provoked the solidarity of the Episcopal Conferences throughout the region.
The bishops invite the parishioners to celebrate as a “domestic church”, in each parish, in their sectors and as a family, the novenas to the Immaculate Conception, the quintessential Catholic feast of Nicaraguans.
