Where is Father Eugenio Pastor Rodríguez? That is the question that the residents of Las Segovias have been asking since Saturday night, May 20. On Sunday the news became more relevant: the priest has disappeared and this Monday there is still no news about the whereabouts of the priest, although versions circulating on social networks suggest that he could have been kidnapped by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
Father Eugenio Pastor Rodríguez Benavides is parish priest of the Divina Providencia church, in Jalapa, Nueva Segovia. “Nothing is known about him,” the priest who had to come to officiate the mass at the parish in charge of Rodríguez said in a live broadcast on Facebook.
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Hours later, the Diocese of Estelí reported that “Father Pastor Eugenio Rodríguez Benavides, parish priest of the Divina Providencia Parish of Jalapa and Father Leonardo Guevara Gutiérrez, parish priest of the Estelí Cathedral have been requested by the National Police on Saturday 20 and Monday May 22 respectively, and transferred to Managua to one of the formation houses of the Church, while a time of investigation on administrative matters of the extinct Cáritas Diocesana de Estelí elapses.
The crime against Yaritza Martínez, registered in El Pedregal, jurisdiction of the municipality of Laguna de Perlas; in the South Caribbean, points out in a preliminary version that the motive was for robbery. The victim was in her house accompanied by a minor.
More than two attackers would be responsible. Neighbors of Martínez say that the 20-year-old woman was a merchant and that those who came to her house on the day of the events were to rob her.
For a few weeks now, community members and voices from civil society in this area of the country have said that insecurity “has skyrocketed” in the municipalities of the Nicaraguan Caribbean. In these areas there have been recurring femicides, homicides and violent robberies in recent days.
The remains of the Nicaraguan migrant Santos Lucio Dolmus Castillo, 36, arrived on Saturday at Villa 15 de Julio, in Chinandega, the place where he left 8 years ago in search of improving his living conditions.
The Nicaraguan died in a hospital in Dallas, Texas, on April 5, where he was taken by a group of migrants with whom he was conversing near a lake in that state, but until now they have not explained what happened. The family appealed for solidarity and raised $7,000 for repatriation and a Christian burial in his homeland.
More than fifty boys and girls who lived as refugees in an orphanage in Veracruz, a region of the municipality of Nindirí, in Masaya, live in uncertainty after the Police took over the facilities of the Casa Bernabé center on Friday and that the Attorney General’s Office General of the Republic (PGR), will inform the administrators that their assets are confiscated.
The Ministry of the Interior (Migob) annihilated the legal status of the Verbo Christian Mission Association, in charge of the Casa Bernabé project, which had been operating in the country for 25 years. By annulling their legal personality, the building was occupied by police and armed civilians, which caused anxiety to the personnel who worked in the organization.
Related news: Ortega has taken away almost 30 university study options from young people
A citizen, who identifies herself as a former member of said association, said that since Thursday, they came to take the children from the orphanage. Since 2020, the government authorities, through the Ministry of the Family, had notified them of the closure because it allegedly did not meet “the conditions for the care of children and adolescents.”
Ending university autonomy has been the purpose of the Ortega regime. Between December 13, 2021 and May 18, 2023, Nicaraguan youth have lost around 30 options to choose higher education centers, due to the arbitrary cancellation of the houses of study by the Sandinista regime.
The disarticulation of university options began in December 2021, when the legal personality of the Hispano-American University was cancelled.
The official guillotine even beheaded the Superior Council of Private Universities (COSUP), which brought together 14 private universities. It continued in 2022 with the cancellation, confiscation and alteration of the statutes of at least 22 university organizations, including the former and private Polytechnic University of Nicaragua, a rebel stronghold of the 2018 social protests.
Then they continued with the annulment and confiscation of assets from the Popular University of Nicaragua, the University of Humanist Studies, Paulo Freyre University and others.
