The auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Managua, Monsignor Silvio José Báez Ortega, recalled the call he made to Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo to stop the repression on April 18, 2018 and referred to the sociopolitical crisis in Nicaragua on the sixth anniversary of social protests.
After the banishment of two bishops and a group of priests to the Vatican on January 14, the Catholic leader was called by Pope Francis to the Holy See and now limits himself to sharing and commenting on the Gospel of the Day on his social networks. .
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«I call on Daniel Ortega and his wife to stop the violence and repression. Don’t endanger the peace of the country! Know how to listen, dialogue, have the maturity to rectify so many errors for the good of Nicaragua. “Be sensible!” reads the tweet that the bishop published at 7:47 p.m. on April 18, 2018, when dozens of young people and elderly people were beaten by the Sandinista Youth and a group of hooded men on Camino de Oriente, in Managua. The leader reshared that message this day on his social networks.
On the social network, Monsignor Báez stated that that April 18 “Nicaragua began the path towards freedom, justice and democracy”; although “from that moment on, unfortunately, violence and repression prevailed.”
Gone are his homilies that denounced the authoritarian drift of the couple in power in Nicaragua. In mid-March 2024, the bishop published in X that “a prophet who is threatened with death does not expose himself recklessly; but he exercises his ministry wherever possible, always remaining faithful to the mission received from God.
The prelate left Nicaragua in 2019 on the recommendation of Pope Francis. The bishop denounced that there was a plan by Daniel Ortega’s regime to assassinate him, drones were monitoring him in his residence and he was beaten and injured in the Basilica of San Sebastián in Diriamba, department of Carazo.
Since the beginning of the sociopolitical crisis that the country is suffering, the Ortega regime has banished, expelled, and prevented the entry of 170 religious men and 76 nuns of the Catholic Church into Nicaraguan territory.
Through persecution, accusations and imprisonment, the Sandinista dictatorship attacked the religious clergy due to their support for the Protestants of that April 2018.
