MEXICO CITY — Pope Francis expressed his “concern” on Monday about the political situation in Nicaragua and the arrest of at least 15 priests and seminarians, including two bishops, and asked to seek “the path of dialogue” to resolve the crisis in that country.
In the first Angelus prayer of the year 2024 from St. Peter’s Square, the head of the Catholic Church showed his “closeness and prayer” with the religious “deprived of liberty” in Nicaragua, with their families and with the rest of the country. in the Pope’s first reaction to the priest raids.
“I follow with concern what is happening in Nicaragua, where bishops and priests have been deprived of their freedom,” the Pope said. “Let the path of dialogue always be sought to overcome difficulties.”
Ortega and his persecution against religious people
In the last days of December, uniformed and plainclothes police detained a bishop, 12 priests, two seminarians and more than 20 lay people in Nicaragua, according to Church authorities and opponents of dictator Daniel Ortega.
The list includes Monsignor Isidoro Mora, bishop of Siuna (northeast) arrested on December 20, and the vicars of the Archdiocese of Managua Carlos Avilés, Silvio Fonseca and Miguel Mántica, as well as eight parish priests from different cities in the country, detained among on the 27th and 30th of last month.
The whereabouts of all those detained are unknown. Police have neither confirmed nor denied reports of the arrests.
The Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua has not commented on these raids, but the archbishop of Managua, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes, in an apparent allusion to the issue, asked his faithful on Sunday to pray for “the absence of their priests.”
The detainees are joined by the bishop of Matagalpa (north), Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, deprived of liberty since August 2022 and sentenced to 26 years in prison in February of last year for “treason to the country”, after refusing to be deported to United States along with 222 opponents released from prison.
There is “a fierce hunt” for priests, Monsignor Silvio Báez, auxiliary bishop of Managua who is in exile in Miami, wrote on his X account, formerly Twitter.
Lawyer Martha Patricia Molina, an expert in religious affairs, said in an interview that the regime intends to “disappear the Catholic Church of Nicaragua.” Opposition leaders asked the Vatican to intervene to stop what they consider to be an “extermination plan” against the Church.
Last October, 12 imprisoned priests were released and sent to Rome after a negotiation between the Holy See and the Ortega regime, which has faced serious tensions with the Catholic Church for more than five years.
After the social protests of 2018, Ortega accused several bishops of having supported “a failed coup d’état” against him. In March 2022, Apostolic Nuncio Valdemar Sommertag was expelled from the country and diplomatic relations with the Vatican were suspended a year later, after Pope Francis described his regime as “a rude dictatorship.”
Source: AP
