(EFE).- Pope Francis today expressed his “concern” about the detention of Catholic priests in Nicaragua by President Daniel Ortega and asked that “the path of dialogue always be sought” to overcome the problems.
“I follow with concern everything that is happening in Nicaragua, where bishops and priests have been deprived of their freedom. I convey to them, their family and the entire Church of the country my closeness in prayer,” he said from the window of the Palace Apostolic after the prayer of the first Angelus of the year.
Francis urged “insistent prayer” to the faithful who listened to him from St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican. “In the meantime, I hope that the path of dialogue will always be sought to overcome difficulties. We pray today for Nicaragua,” he concluded.
The Nicaraguan Government of Daniel Ortega and the Catholic Church are experiencing moments of great tension, marked by the expulsion and imprisonment of priests
The Nicaraguan Government of Daniel Ortega and the Catholic Church are experiencing moments of great tension, marked by the expulsion and imprisonment of priests, the prohibition of religious activities and the suspension of their diplomatic relations.
Since December 20, the Nicaraguan Police have arrested a bishop, 13 priests and two seminarians, according to human rights defenders and opposition leaders in exile.
Neither the Government nor the Police confirm or deny the alleged arrest of those 16 religious, who join Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who on February 10 was sentenced to 26 years and 4 months in prison, stripped of his nationality and suspended his citizenship rights. for life for the crime of treason.
Last August, Ortega ordered the dissolution in the country of the Company of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits, an order to which Pope Francis himself belongs, in addition to expropriating all of its assets.
Months earlier, the pontiff had attacked the Ortega regime, calling it a “rude dictatorship”, after the conviction of Monsignor Álvarez. “With great respect, I have no choice but to think of an imbalance in the person who leads (Ortega). There we have a imprisoned bishop, a very serious, very capable man. He wanted to give his testimony and did not accept exile,” he said. half Infobae.
The Nicaraguan cardinal and archbishop of Managua, Leopoldo José Brenes Solórzano, expressed this Sunday in Managua his closeness to the families and communities that “at this moment feel the absence of their priests.”
Also the auxiliary bishop of Managua, Silvio Báez, whom Pope Francis ordered to leave Nicaragua in 2019, asked this Saturday the international community to be “more effective in the pressure” against the Ortega Government.
“We ask the international community to be more effective in the pressure against Ortega’s Sandinista dictatorship, to demand the freedom of all political prisoners and the restoration of democratic order in the country,” said Báez, highly critical of Ortega, in a message addressed “to the people of God” that he issued through his social networks.
The bishop alleged that “the tyrants are aware that the Nicaraguan people love their Church and their pastors.”
Báez, who lives in Miami and whom the authorities declared a “traitor to the country” and stripped of his nationality, also begged “the Church of the entire world to turn their eyes toward Nicaragua,” not to leave them alone and to offer their prayers for “our oppressed people and raise your prophetic voice in favor of this persecuted Church.”
The bishop alleged that “the tyrants are aware that the Nicaraguan people love their Church and their pastors,” and that is why “they are terrified by the existence of a people conscious and mobilized by the Christian faith, because they are a critical, free and subject of his own history”.
On October 18, the Nicaraguan Government released 12 priests and sent them to the Vatican after an agreement with the Holy See, although Monsignor Rolando Álvarez was not among them, who refuses to leave the country.
Nicaragua has been going through a crisis since April 2018 that has worsened after the November 2021 elections, in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term, fourth consecutive and second with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice president, with his main contenders in prison.
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