An official Nicaraguan media reported the decision -unprecedented- of a local judge in the country to order the preventive arrest of a priest who is accused of the alleged crime of aggravated injuries to the detriment of a woman.
Independent media had reported on Wednesday the arrest of the priest Manuel Salvador García, leader of the Jesús de Nazareno church, located in a town belonging to the department of Granada, about 60 kilometers south of Managua.
Thursday’s announcement, which comes amid growing tensions between the government of Daniel Ortega and the Catholic Church.
In a video recorded by witnesses who stood outside the temple last Wednesday night, the priest appears visibly irritated with a machete yelling at the locals to refrain from entering the church to mediate an apparent conflict he had with a woman who was on the spot.
The priest was arrested by the police shortly after.
Who accuses the priest?
A woman, identified as Martha Candelaria Rivas, 44, reported to the official media that she was attacked by the priest after an argument. Rivas was inside the temple.
So far neither the Catholic Church nor the police authorities have ruled on the matter, in the midst of secrecy about the case, according to information offered by sources from the parish to the voice of america.
A local resident who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, told VOA that police patrols have been circling the temple for several weeks.
The arrest of the priest is unprecedented in the last 30 years and could mean a further fracture in the already deteriorated relations between the Church and the ruling party in Nicaragua, according to former opposition deputy Eliseo Núñez.
The immediate precedent for the arrest of priests was in the 1980s, precisely with the Sandinistas in power, indicates Núñez, who recalls that there were three cases at that time.
“The first of a priest named Bismarck Carballo who humiliated him, took him out naked and said he was with a woman and it turned out to be a setup, then with another who accused him of conspiring to plant a bomb, both were detained for a short time. “, he recalls.
The third was a priest named Pablo Antonio Cuadra, who was captured and taken directly by helicopter to the Honduran side, “practically banishing him.”
“They accuse the father of a crime that is not even the one they present with the montage, because serious injuries must have permanent scars or a disability due to the aggression, everything indicates that it is montage,” Nuñez underlines about said case.
Weeks ago, other priests denounced harassment by the Police in at least three temples where religious critics of Ortega were present.
“They persecute us for being faithful to our priestly ministry, for not kneeling before the oppressor and for standing up for God’s people,” said recently to VOA Nicaraguan priest Edwin Román, exiled in the United States after receiving threats from the first lady and vice president Rosario Murillo.
The former Nicaraguan ambassador to the OAS assured that the arrested priest “is another victim” of a “dirty campaign of the dictatorship” and said that the priest “hasted and humiliated him day and night” until finally putting him in prison.
This Thursday the State Department published a report on Religious Freedom in the world and widely highlighted the attacks to which the clergy in Managua have been subjected under the administration of the Ortega-Murillo couple.
The report points to prison threats against priests for their critical stance against the Nicaraguan president.
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