The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, revealed that he has never had respect for the Nicaraguan bishops, including José Antonio Lezcano y Ortega, who was the first archbishop of Managua from 1913 to 1952, and who, he said, was his great-uncle .
In a graduation ceremony for National Police cadets, the transcript of which was released this Tuesday by the Executive, Ortega assured that his great-uncle blessed the weapons of the United States Army that kept Nicaragua occupied from 1912 to 1933.
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This action by Archbishop Lezcano and Ortega is the “greatest shame” of a Christian, said the president, who explained that he was “ashamed because he had been my father’s uncle (Daniel Ortega Cerda) and therefore our great-uncle.”
“Well, it was the bishop, but I couldn’t respect him as a religious authority, I couldn’t see in him the word of Christ, no matter how much they spoke in the name of Christ. They were just blaspheming every time they spoke in the name of Christ,” he noted.
TILDA THEM AS “SOMOCISTAS”
Ortega charged against the Nicaraguan bishops and priests whom he called “pharisees”, “whitewashed tombs”, “Somocistas”, that is, alleged affection for the Somoza family, who led Nicaragua with a heavy hand between 1937 and 1979.
He also accused the religious of supporting those who demonstrated against his government in April 2018, protests that he classifies as an attempted coup.
Ortega confessed that since he was a child, although he had faith, admiration and respect for Jesus Christ, “he could not trust the priests” nor the bishops, who “were incapable of condemning the crimes that were committed” during Somocism, “much less than They would have had the courage to condemn the assassination of the general of free men, Augusto C. Sandino (1934), rather they applauded it”.
He criticized the fact that at the funeral of Somoza García, “executed by the hero Rigoberto López Pérez”, in 1956, “the bishops buried the dictator with the honors of prince of the Church”.
“Imagine, a tyrant, a murderer was buried with the honors of prince of the Church!”, he reproached.
ROLANDO ÁLVAREZ, FIRST BISHOP ACCUSED
“I never had respect for the bishops, I could not believe in the bishops. With some priests there was rapprochement, the exception was the priests who had a Christian practice, like (the Spanish) Gaspar García Laviana, who without being Nicaraguan had more commitment to the people, ”he indicated.
Last week the Nicaraguan Public Ministry, headed by former Sandinista guerrilla Ana Julia Guido, accused Bishop Álvarez, a very critical critic of the Ortega government, before a judge for the crimes of conspiracy to undermine national integrity and propagation of news false through information and communication technologies to the detriment of the State and Nicaraguan society.
Álvarez, 56, is the first bishop arrested and accused since Ortega returned to power in 2007 after coordinating a Government Junta from 1979 to 1985 and presiding over the country for the first time from 1985 to 1990.
On July 4, 1986, the then Sandinista government, also headed by Ortega, exiled the bishop of the diocese of Juigalpa, Pablo Antonio Vega, accused of supporting the Contras and who was forcibly removed from his episcopal headquarters at midnight. uploaded to a military helicopter and left in the border jungle with Honduras.
The arrest and accusation against Bishop Álvarez, seven other priests and two collaborators, is the most recent chapter of a particularly turbulent year for the Catholic Church in Nicaragua with the Ortega government, which it has branded as “coup plotters” and “terrorists”. to the hierarchs
