The auxiliary bishop of Managua, Monsignor Silvio Jose Baez, pointed out at Easter mass that “no night is forever” and those who believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ will see that “even the heaviest stones can be removed.” A message full of hope that he sent —from his exile— to the Nicaraguan population on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the April 2018 Rebellion, brutally repressed by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
“The Risen Christ comes to us in the nights of life. With him, no night is forever. Not the night of sin, failure and fear; nor the night of disappointment and weariness. The nights of the towns are not forever either. Neither the night of the war, nor the night of the oppressive powers, nor the night of the pain of the victims, nor the night of fatigue in the fight. No night is forever,” said the bishop from the Santa Agatha temple in Miami.
At a time when sociopolitical crisis that Nicaragua has been going through for four years continues to worsen without anyone seeing a quick solution, the bishop pointed out that “even the heaviest stones can be removed” and “with the strength of the Risen Lord even the obstacles that seem most insurmountable, fade and disappear.”
“We must not give up”
Báez also stated that “we must never resign ourselves to thinking that things cannot change” and warned that the risen Jesus “wants to fill our lives with his strength, he wants to warm our hearts with his love and illuminate our minds with his light, to help us overcome our discouragementso that we do not fall into mediocrity and indifference”.
In life “each one unfolds his own potential”, reflected the bishop, but this diversity “must not give rise to envy and conflict”. Also in society, “there is a diversity of visions and strategies among people and groups, -and it is good that it is so-, but everyone must make an effort to seek the common good,” he added.
We Nicaraguans “have already suffered a lot because of sterile selfishness and useless confrontations that have turned social coexistence into a grotesque competition. We need individuals and groups to run without tripping or disqualifying each other. There is no need to run to arrive first and receive applause and privileges, but rather to build together a new coexistence based on fraternity, peace and justice”, concluded the Bishop.
“Crucified peoples are also resurrected”
In an interview that Monsignor Báez gave to CONFIDENTIAL, prior to Holy Week, he recalled the homily he gave at the Esquipulas church in Managua on Palm Sunday 2019, before leaving for exile, and maintains the conviction that “just as Jesus Christ, crucified by the powers of the world, was resurrected by God to a life that does not end, also the crucified peoples, sooner or later, are resurrected”.
The bishop described the government system in Nicaragua as a “cruel regime”, and ruled out that the hate speech against the Church that is practiced from power has any credibility, it is “a speech full of lies, that the only thing that shows it is a very strong sign of weakness,” he said.
Monsignor Báez shared his “pain, with great intensity”, for the situation in which the political prisoners of the dictatorship find themselves, and raised his voice “demanding their release”, and revealed that in November of last year when he met with the pope Francisco, alone in his room, spoke to him about the prisoners of conscience in Nicaragua. “The pope was surprised, he showed his pain and his surprise too, because I think he was not sufficiently informed. And he asked me to leave him the document that I brought him. I’m sure he did something,” Baez said.
Monsignor Silvio José Báez celebrated the creation of a commission of independent experts by the UN Human Rights Council, to investigate the violations of rights in Nicaragua since 2018. The “Prophetic Church” must support the demand for justice, he affirmed, and “ I am sure that the Church of Nicaragua, led by its bishops, will never bow to lies, will never lock itself in fear, nor will it ever be an accomplice of unjust and cruel powers.”
