The Nicaraguan Catholic Church is experiencing its darkest moments in the last 30 years and is experiencing them precisely with President Daniel Ortega in power, who during his electoral campaign in 2007 called for “sorry for past mistakes” in reference to the attacks against the clergy during the 1980s.
However, the pattern repeated itself today, they point out to the voice of america some opponents, who lament the recent arrests of priests, the closure of radio stations belonging to the Church, and the insults launched by the Sandinista president who accuses the religious of being “coup plotters.”
In the midst of all this, the opposition has asked Pope Francis, the highest leader of the Catholic Church, to speak out against the persecution unleashed by the government of Daniel Ortega against priests and religious faith in Nicaragua.
Last week, some 60 civil society organizations issued a joint letter this week in which they “desperately” asked the Pope for his pronouncement.
“We feel moved and outraged by the images… in which Monsignor Rolando José Álvarez, Bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, appears surrounded by agents of the National Police kneeling with the Blessed Sacrament in custody in his hands after being prevented from entering the temple to celebrate the religious services of that day”, the organizations stressed.
In addition, they recalled that the Police have notified that they are investigating Monsignor Álvarez and have placed him under house arrest. “We fear for what may happen to him,” they said.
The parishioners expressed the clamor made by the priest Uriel Vallejos, who remained in captivity in the parish house of Jesús de la Divina Misericordia in the municipality of Sébaco, while he was also surrounded by police.
“The cry of Father Vallejos since his confinement still resonates in our ears and our hearts: “Don’t leave me alone,” the signatory organizations stated.
But other voices have also challenged Pope Francis, such as the journalist Andrés Oppenheimer, who in an opinion column in The New Herald He called the Supreme Pontiff’s decision not to pronounce on the events in Nicaragua “scandalous.”
“The Pope’s silence on Nicaragua is just one of several surprising recent omissions on his part,” said Oppenheimer, who criticized that the hierarch has also not visited Ukraine, whom he described as “victim of the largest foreign invasion in Europe since World War II.” ”.
However, the journalist criticized that the top leader of the church “recently found the time to make a six-day trip to Canada, to apologize for the abuses of the Church in the 19th century and in the 1970s.” “What was more important now?” the reporter questioned.
Last weekend, a group of Nicaraguan opponents demonstrated in the face of this situation in the La Merced church in Costa Rica and called for “belligerence” from Pope Francis.
“We are demanding an end to the harassment of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship towards our Church in Nicaragua and towards our priest, Rolando Álvarez, so that the dictatorship knows that we are not the Church of silence. They were wrong: here is a Church that vibrates, that fights until we have freed ourselves from them very soon, ”he told the VOA the opposition and released political prisoner Gabriel Putoy.
“We ask the Pope to be more belligerent…to please set his sights on Nicaragua, to be more belligerent. We do know that they are working, but it is not just saying it in a homily, it is speaking directly, it is using all diplomatic channels. The Church cannot remain silent in these times”, Putoy sentenced.
Observer of the Holy See in the OAS expresses his desire for dialogue
However, although the Pope has not commented on the recent crisis in Nicaragua, last week the Holy See’s permanent observer to the Organization of American States, Monsignor Juan Antonio Cruz Serrano, expressed in an extraordinary session that there was in this regard that “they did not stop expressing their concern about the panorama in Managua.
“The Holy See cannot fail to express its concern in this regard, while assuring its desire to always collaborate with those who are committed to dialogue, as an indispensable instrument of democracy and guarantor of a more humane and fraternal civilization,” Cruz Serrano said.
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