The Catholic Church of Nicaragua has launched a desperate cry for help to the world in the face of leader Daniel Ortega’s latest salvo against it. “This week the Sandinista dictatorship has unleashed a fierce hunt against priests, taking several of them to prison, adding to two bishops who were already imprisoned,” Monsignor Silvio José Báez, auxiliary bishop of Managua, testified on his social networks. in exile.
“I beg the bishops and the episcopal conferences of the world not to abandon us at this moment, to pray for the Church of Nicaragua and to show solidarity and raise their voices denouncing this persecution of the dictatorship against our Church!” he added from exile the bishop, one of the great symbols in the fight against the revolutionary regime.
Two of his companions, the rebel bishop Rolando Álvarez, considered the Nicaraguan Mandela, and Bishop Isidoro del Carmen Mora, of the diocese of Siuna, remain in prison by order of Ortega and his wife, co-president Rosario Murillo. Monsignor Álvarez, sentenced to 26 years in prison by tradition to the country, has already served 500 days in the worst cells of the dictatorship, from which he was paraded on a couple of occasions by the Sandinista propaganda apparatus. It is against Mora that he included Álvarez in his prayers, detested by the presidential couple after ruining the plan to banish all of his enemies.
In the last few hours, the number of priests kidnapped by police agents and Sandinista paramilitary forces has increased. Five priests fell into government hands during the day on Friday: Monsignor Silvio Fonseca, director of the John Paul II Institute, was captured after giving the Eucharist in the Santa Faz parish; Father Mykel Monterrey, parish priest of Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria in Managua, was kidnapped at midnight; Monsignor Miguel Mántica and the priests Raúl Zamora and Gerardo José Rodríguez.
In total there are 16 religious detained, although two of them, the priests Jader Guido and Óscar Escoto, were released from custody.
Murillo took advantage of his daily homily on state channels to attack these “diabolical” priests. “The most ridiculous and fun thing is that there are those who speak of faith with diabolical words and feelings. The real devils are those who were sowing hatred,” said Ortega’s wife.