Faced with the repressive escalation of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, two more priests from the Diocese of Matagalpa were forced to leave the country for fear of being the next to be imprisoned. Religious leaders add to the list of religious who are fleeing Ortega’s repression.
The exiled priests are Carlos Zeledonparish priest of the municipality of San Dionisio, and Jorge Leonel Mairena Sanchezparish priest of the Nuestra Señora de Lourdes de El Tuma-La Dalia church, in Matagalpa.
Through your account at Facebookthe father Erick Diazwho was in charge of the San José de Obrero parish in El Tuma-La Dalia, from exile confirmed the forced displacement of the two religious, without providing further details.
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The former official of the Judiciary, Yader Morazán, also confirmed the exile of the priests Zeledón and Mairena.
“Apart from Father Carlos Zeledón, parish priest of the Municipality of San Dionisio, Matagalpa, apparently, Father Jorge Leonel Mairena Sánchez, parish priest of the Nuestra Señora de La Dalia-Matagalpa church, also went into exile in the face of threats,” Morazán wrote in his count of Twitter.
The team of Article 66 He learned unofficially that the priest Zeledón, less than a week ago, was intercepted by the Ortega Police at the San Francisco junction, in Matagalpa. The officers searched the truck in which he was traveling and minutes later he was released under threats. For this reason, the priest presumably decided to leave the country.
Among the religious who have opted for exile are the priests Uriel Vallejos, Vicente Martínez, Sebastián López, Mangel Hernández, Dani García, Erick Díaz, Guillermo Blandón and Edwing Román.
Gonzalo Carrión, defense attorney for the Nicaragua Nunca Más Human Rights Collective, confirmed that they have documented several cases of Nicaraguan religious who went into exile and without specifying figures, he explained that there are more cases of priests in this same situation.
The country has been going through a sociopolitical crisis since 2018 in which more than a dozen religious have been arrested and more than 55 have opted for exile, according to a report by the Collective.
The differences between the Catholics and Ortega have sharpened almost five years ago, when the religious opened their doors to anti-government protesters who were fleeing armed attacks by the police and paramilitaries, in the largest social outbreak in the country in almost half a century.
