The Church that stands up to the dictatorship

Recently, we have seen in Nicaragua the escalation of religious persecution against the Nicaraguan Church, its bishops and priests. The Ortega dictatorship has had no shame in surrounding parishes, besieging bishops and even going so far as to imprison a priest (Manuel García, from the bishopric of Granada) setting up a kind of cheap little movie to Televisa, as they already did in 2018.

The Church in Nicaragua, despite the fact that the most radicalized sectors of the opposition demand that it go out and say four high-sounding things to the dictatorship; he has not been silent in the face of authoritarianism. It is true – in honor of the truth – that a large part of the clergy is afraid of being imprisoned or even confined in their parishes without the possibility of mobilizing.

Related news: Monsignor Avilés denounces that Ortega carries out espionage against the Church

I illustrate it like this: Only in the last week, a few media related to Catholicism in Spain contacted me to act as an interlocutor and to obtain testimonies from Catholic priests in Nicaragua. Many of them excused themselves saying that they did not have permission from their bishops to speak. Others simply did not answer my messages or refused to appear in the media because they want to return to the country and the last one, who was finishing his studies in a European country, told me that “you had to be careful”. This is how we are: There is fear, and we do not have to deny it. Authoritarianism is very scary.

However, the priests who are not silent continue to say clearly that the problem in Nicaragua can be summed up in three words: Ortega-Murillo dictatorship. At the beginning of June, it was published in the Catholic weekly Alpha and Omega from the Archbishopric of Madrid an interview with Monsignor Carlos Avilés, Vicar General of Managua, which dramatically illustrates the situation in the country regarding violations of religious freedom.

The Avilés interview clarifies the extent to which Ortega’s siege against the Church has advanced. For example, he revealed that officials of the regime have been sent to record the homilies of the priests to see if they speak of the national reality.

“I have had information that the political secretariat and the government have recorded at least 40 or 50 homilies to analyze them and see what we say”, Avilés told my colleague José Calderero.

He also confessed that the Police have set up a surveillance post for Leopoldo Brenes, the Archbishop of Managua, on the block where he lives in the Altagracia neighborhood of the capital.

“There are always several police officers on the corner and everyone who comes to deliver a document, or for a meeting with the archbishop, they ask the reason for their visit, they ask for their identification document, they take photos,” confessed the also parish priest of the church of Las Colinas de Managua.

For the religious, Nicaragua under the authoritarianism of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has entered a spiral of continued abuses of power in crescendo since April 2018, which has multiplied corruption in the State, nepotism and arbitrariness in decision-making throughout the public sector, subjugating it to the interest of the Ceaucescu of the tropics.

“It is an unprecedented situation. We have never seen such brazenness, such abuse of power. The rights of any person are violated with impunity. of all There is a total unconstitutionality and an absolute lack of institutionality”lamented the priest.

I’ve been saying it for a long time. But until now, someone from the middle positions within the Nicaraguan Church confirms it: The bishops and priests are the only ones who are denouncing human rights violations within the country.

The rest of the sectors of society have either been forced into silence, have self-censored (like the only TV channels that escape the control of the propaganda apparatus of Mrs. Murillo and her offspring) or have been forced into exile ( as the fragmented and divided political opposition). The only real counterweight to the Ortega dictatorship, today, is the Catholic Church of Nicaragua.

And it is precisely because Ortega and his wife see the Church as “real enemies” that they allow themselves to persecute priests and bishops, take the Catholic Radio Television of Nicaragua and create pitiful little movies to keep a priest in the ergastulas of the new Chipote.

“They punish us so that we remain silent and stop walking with the people, but not saying what is happening would make us accomplices. They want a silent Church, but not to speak would be a sin (…) In this situation, we are the only ones who are speaking, expressing what the people want, which is for this government to leave and we can live in peace”the priest ended the interview, but not before asking my colleague Calderero in a tone full of hobby that the Spanish Catholic press “don’t forget Nicaragua”.

The words of Avilés and the actions of bishops like Silvio José Báez or Rolando Álvarez, so loaded with prophetism; they join that long tradition of the Latin American Church that knew how to leave behind its fears or its coexistence with power to side with the peoples of Latin America to demand freedom and social justice.

Related news: Monsignor Báez: “They want a blind and dumb Church in the face of pain and abuse of the unjust”

Faith made multiple priests and bishops become fervent defenders of human rights from the Rio Grande to Patagonia. And so the mainland more catholic it was filled with Christian martyrs like Monsignor Óscar Romero; who offered their lives for that of their peoples.

Being a Christian has never been easy. Neither in the times of Nero, nor in the Latin America of the military dictatorships supported by the US, nor in the Nicaragua of Ortega and Murillo. Today, not denouncing the injustices in Nicaragua makes us accomplices of omission.

I have no doubt that the Nicaraguan Church will continue to speak out, denouncing injustices and announcing hope. Yes, there is fear in the clergy and in the laity. Why deny it? We are human, and wearing a cassock cannot always make you escape from the repressive schizophrenia of the dictatorship; but there is also hope because the dark nights end one day, and –as a bishop said, also a prophet, today far from his homeland-, the crucified peoples always rise again.