On this third Sunday of Lent, Monsignor Silvio Báez, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Managua, called not to lose hope and “trust in God” that they will soon leave the slavery that the countries live.
In his homily from the Santa Agatha church in Miami, United States, the religious recalled the story of Moses and the slavery that the people of Israel experienced in Egypt.
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He pointed out that like him, many Nicaraguans have had to go into exile so as not to be victims of further oppression. «He was an exile, like many of us. His zeal for his people had led him into exile », Báez recalled about the situation of Moisés.
The Catholic hierarch said that instead of lamenting, citizens should open their eyes “like Moses (…) and let us discover God, perhaps silent and discreet, but always present in our lives and in the history of our people. The image of the burning bush reminds us that God is present in the empty and the arid and that everything can be transformed by Him. Also failure, crisis, repression and injustice».
Alluding to the political repression that Nicaragua is experiencing at the hands of the Ortega regime, Báez emphasized that “God who cares for those who are victims of injustice and oppression, lives attentive to those who are mistreated with inhuman cruelty and suffers with those who shout from his pain.
The pharaohs arise when they enslave the peoples
Comparing totalitarian regimes, Monsignor Báez asserted that “the pharaohs arise when the powerful consider the people their servants and slaves, when their wishes become law, when others are nothing more than worthless men and women, who they use to feed their selfishness and satiate their sick ambitions for wealth and power, however, biblical history teaches that God does not tolerate the pharaohs of old or the pharaohs of today,” he explained.
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He also stated that the injustice and oppression suffered by peoples are not a simple social and political problem, but a religious problem. “It is something that has to do with God. Oppressing peoples and taking away their freedom, as is happening in some of our countries, or promoting war against other peoples, as Russia is doing today against Ukraine, is inhumane, even sacrilegious.”
“If God were neutral in these situations, he would become an accomplice. For this reason, we believers must always denounce and reject injustice and violence and commit ourselves so that the dignity of human beings is respected in society, which in the eyes of God is the most sacred thing that exists on earth,” he expressed in his homily.
Call to continue demanding justice
Despite the scenes of violence and repression at the hands of the dictatorship, the bishop called for not losing faith and continuing to defend human rights.
“God is mysteriously present when we defend the poor, when we demand that political prisoners be released, when we demand that those who have wanted to be silenced be given back their word, when justice is done for the victims of oppressive power. God is always coming down to give back to human beings their dignity and freedom.
“The burning bush also reminds us that God does not forget oppressed peoples and is coming down to free them. The burning bush promises us that God can, also in us and in our peoples, bring life to the parched and withered, unleash liberation in the midst of oppression, and transform the despised and weak into beauty and strength,” he concluded.
