Under police siege and with “infiltrated informers” among the Catholic parishioners, the patron saint festivities dedicated to Santa Ana began this Saturday, July 8, in the municipality of Niquinohomo, in the department of Masaya, where this year, like in the rest of Nicaragua; Processions cannot be held because the dictatorship has prohibited them.
The exiled priest Edwing Román, who was parish priest of the San Miguel Arcángel church in Masaya, announced through his personal Twitter account that the patron saint festivities of his town, Niquinohomo, dedicated to Santa Ana, began this Saturday with the “lowering” of the image, but said religious activity took place under the siege of the Police at the service of the Ortega-Murillo regime and under covert surveillance.
«At this moment, down from the image of Santa Ana, patron saint of my town Niquinohomo. May the grandmother of God reach the blessings of Jesus Christ for the towns and cities that we celebrate in this month,” the priest wrote.
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It also denounces that, as in all religious celebrations of the Catholic Church, “processions have been prohibited.” And that among the parishioners who attend the lowering of the image “there are infiltrators in the temple”, those who are in charge of spying on the priests and the parishioners.
The patron saint festivities in honor of Santa Ana are celebrated in several municipalities of the country. In Niquinohomo, the main day is July 26 and they conclude on the first weekend of August, but the lowering of the altar of the image of the “earthly grandmother” of Jesus is on July 8.
Visitors and promisees from all over the country attend these celebrations, especially to participate in the processions, which this year will not be able to take place due to the prohibition of the Ortega-Murillo regime that maintains a systematic war against the Catholic Church of Nicaragua.
The lawyer Martha Molina, a researcher who has systematized the repression against the religious institution in her study “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church?”, details that, from 2018 to March of this year, the regime has carried out at least 529 attacks against the Catholic Church, which include sieges, defamation, physical attacks and criminalization of priests.
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Currently, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo keeps the bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of Estelí, Rolando Álvarez, deprived of liberty. In addition, two parish priests are under a kind of house arrest under police investigation and three more are in jail accused of common crimes of doubtful veracity. They have also forced 37 religious into exile, including the auxiliary bishop of Managua, Silvio Báez, and close to 40 religious sisters from various congregations have been expelled from the country.
