Nicaraguan peasants exiled in the neighboring country to the south, made a Stations of the Cross crying out for the political prisoners and denouncing the repression of the Ortega regime against the Catholic Church. The participants carried a banner with the image of Monsignor Rolando Álvarez.
The demonstration was full of symbolism, Nicaraguans carrying posters requesting the release of 36 political prisoners in Nicaragua, among them Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, Bishop of Matagalpa, being the first priest arrested, accumulating more than 200 days in the hands of the dictatorship from Ortega.
Related news: Maradiaga affirms that the regime imprisoned Monsignor Álvarez for criticizing “false Christians”
The citizens followed each station of the Via Sacra, singing songs from the Catholic liturgy in solidarity with the persecuted church, which is resisting the greatest onslaught of the State that has prohibited processions, stations of the cross and characteristic traditions of the biggest week in the country.
In addition, the attendees carried Nicaraguan and church flags, as well as crosses on which they placed photos of Monsignor Álvarez, sentenced to almost 26 years and four months in prison. “Forgive your people Lord” they sang, while they began the prayer in which the peasant leader Francisca Ramírez participated.
Faced with the constant onslaught of the Nicaraguan government against religious freedom, human rights organizations have demanded that the Daniel Ortega administration “adhere to the principle of constitutional secularism that lays the foundations for the guarantee of the exercise of freedom of conscience and religion”.
“This principle includes the prohibition for state authorities to express opinions about the moral or spiritual quality of ministers of any cult or the prohibition of being able to establish a state religion or dispute or claim to establish a spiritual authority in members of the government, since it is not the nature of state authority that is based on legitimate coercion and not on the spiritualization of state leadership based on the persecution of a religious group,” the Inter-American Legal Assistance Center for Human Rights (Calidh) recently said.
The Nicaraguan dictatorship has been merciless against the Catholic Church since 2022, closing Catholic radio stations, threatening religious people to force them into exile, closing organizations belonging to the Church and prohibiting processions of national importance. He has branded priests and bishops “diabolical” and “traitors.”
