The tabernacle of the San Juan Bautista parish, in the municipality of San Fernando, department of Nueva Segovia; It was partially burned, reported journalist Emiliano Chamorro, a prominent reporter on religious issues.
Chamorro pointed out that the act was committed by the “enemies of the Catholic Church”, in reference to the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. Since 2018, the Church and its clergy have been victims of state repression.
Related news: The inquisition of Ortega and Murillo against the Catholic Church in six years
“The dictatorship has shown its hatred of the Church and its pastors, even burning sacred images of great value to the faith of the parishioners,” a parishioner reportedly told the Nicaraguan journalist.
Denies passage to devotees of the Virgin of Cuapa
The communicator also denounced that the Nicaraguan dictatorship blocked the passage of faithful devotees to the Marian Sanctuary of Cuapa. The parishioners were heading to the place to “celebrate the apparitions of the Mother of God, who (in) 1980, appeared to a peasant to ask him to work for peace and reconciliation in Nicaragua.”
In the year of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Cuapa, it was Daniel Ortega who governed Nicaragua under the first Sandinista dictatorship. “Ortega… had the country in a war and Nicaraguan families divided,” the journalist recalled in his X account.
The persecution of the Church
The Nicaraguan Catholic Church has been the target of systematic attacks by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo from 2018 to date. During this five-year period, more than 500 attacks on bishops, priests and lay people have been recorded. In addition, assaults and desecrations have been carried out on religious temples.
In that anti-religious crusade of the “Christian” dictatorship of Nicaragua, the regime forced more than 50 priests into exile, according to a report by the Nicaragua Never Again Human Rights Collective. In addition, the dictatorship ordered the closure of 13 media outlets in charge of the church.
The war waged by the dictatorship against the faith has resulted in the imprisonment of 55 religious people, of whom 44 have been exiled, and the cancellation of at least 381 religious organizations (280 evangelical), according to the Nicaragua Never Again Human Rights Collective. .
In its authoritarian drift against the Church, the dictatorship ordered the deployment of police contingents in all the Catholic temples in the country to besiege and prevent the more than 4 thousand Holy Week processions in 2023 and 2024 to prevent any religious activity that was attempted to take place in the streets. .
