The arrest of at least 15 priests and seminarians in Nicaragua in recent days, added to the sentencing of Bishop Rolando Álvarez to 26 years in prison, puts an end to a year marked by reports of persecution and exile of religious, according to analysts and opponents. who claim that the government of President Daniel Ortega “wants to disappear” the Church.
According to spokesmen for the Catholic Church, a bishop and five priests were taken from their homes and parishes by uniformed and plainclothes police between December 20 and 28, and nine other parish priests were arrested in the following two days in various sites in the Central American country.
There is “a fierce hunt” for priests, Monsignor Silvio Báez, auxiliary bishop of Managua and one of the most critical voices in the Church, wrote on his X account, formerly Twitter. After denouncing police repression of the 2018 anti-government protests, Báez received death threats and was forced into exile in Miami.
The Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua has not commented on the mass arrests of religious, 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.”
Cardinal Brenes celebrated a mass in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Managua, to express his “closeness” to Catholic families and communities, whom he invited to “seek together in prayer the consolation of God and in ecclesial unity our strength.”
The Nicaraguan police have neither denied nor confirmed the complaints about these events.
Among the imprisoned priests, in addition to Bishop Álvarez, accused of “treason” for refusing to be deported to the United States along with 222 released opponents, is Isidoro Mora, bishop of Siuna (northeast) arrested on December 20. His whereabouts, like the rest of the detainees, are unknown.
Also notable are the Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Managua, Monsignor Carlos Avilés, the Vicar of Pastoral, Silvio Fonseca, both older adults, and nine parish priests, such as Father Raúl Zamora, whose Divina Misericordia church in the capital was attacked with bullets by police. and paramilitaries for an entire night on July 13, 2018, with more than a hundred student refugees inside.
Two other detained priests were released, but remain under police surveillance, according to religious authorities.
Consulted by The Associated Press, lawyer Martha Patricia Molina, an expert in religious affairs, considered that the new wave of arrests could be due to the fact that the priests “are praying” in their masses for Bishop Rolando Álvarez.
Molina also attributes it to the messages of some parish priests in their homilies, in which they have alluded to freedom and human rights. However, in his opinion, the ultimate goal of Ortega’s Sandinista government is to get rid of that critical presence.
“They want to eliminate the Catholic Church of Nicaragua,” says the jurist. She assures that along with the 13 priests and two seminarians detained at the end of the year, the police have taken away more than 20 lay people.
Ortega’s government defines itself as “Christian, socialist and supportive” and in her speeches Vice President Rosario Murillo, the president’s wife, exalts concepts such as faith, forgiveness and love of God.
“The Sandinista discourse must be understood in reverse; a Christian does not attack the word of God,” says Molina, author of the study “Nicaragua, a persecuted Church?”, in which she documented 740 attacks on religious and Catholic sites in the last five years.
Of that total, at least 275 attacks occurred in the last year, when 175 nuns and priests were forced into exile or prevented from entering Nicaragua after a trip, according to Molina’s report.
In the 1980s, during the first Sandinista government, priest Bismarck Carballo was shown naked on official television and bishop Pablo Vega was expelled to Honduras for supporting the “contra” rebels in his masses.
Molina points out that there was also repression against the Church then, but it is possible that many episodes were not documented due to lack of current technological means.
In a statement, the opposition National Blue and White Unit (UNAB) indicated that in 2023 “the most systematic repression of the Catholic Church” took place through the prohibition of processions, imprisonment and banishment of priests, accusations of money laundering, freezing of bank accounts, closure of NGOs and religious universities.
The UNAB called for “unity” of the disintegrated opposition and asked the international community to increase “isolation and sanctions against the dictatorship.”
Another 15 opposition organizations issued a statement stating that these arrests seek to “eliminate hope” for change and instill “fear” among the population, by imprisoning the leaders “of the most credible institution” in the country.
Meanwhile, the Monteverde political group, made up of exiled and released opponents, warned in a statement of “a plan to exterminate” the Church. The government intends to “inflict enormous damage (to the Catholic institution) so that it will not be able to articulate itself after this raid,” Eliseo Núñez, a member of that dissident group, warned at a press conference.
Manuel Orozco, political analyst, said on social networks that Monteverde leaders have asked the Vatican to intervene in the matter and did not rule out that the detained religious will be expelled from the country like the 12 Nicaraguan priests released from prison and sent to Rome in October, after a negotiation. with the Ortega government.
In a videotaped message, Auxiliary Bishop Báez called the priests’ raids an “arbitrary and illegal” action that reveals, he said, the “permanent hatred of the Sandinista dictatorship toward the Church.”
“I beg the bishops and the episcopal conferences of the world not to abandon us,” cried Báez.
So far, the Holy See has not commented on the situation in Nicaragua.
