Nicaraguan spokesperson and vice president Rosario Murillo announced the banishment of seven priests to Rome on Thursday in an appearance on national television, although she did not explain the reasons for the measure.
He said the religious had left for Rome on Wednesday, August 7. “They have arrived safely and have been received by the Holy See,” he said.
Human rights organizations reported days ago that the Ortega government arrested 12 priests in the first four days of August.
The religious belonged to the Diocese of Matagalpa and Estelí, administered at the time by Bishop Rolando José Álvarez Lagos, 57, who was a political prisoner in Nicaragua for more than a year, until he was exiled to Rome by the Ortega government after a negotiation with the Holy See.
“We denounce the intensification of repression against members of the Catholic Church in #Nicaragua,” the Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights, one of the organizations that counted a dozen arrests, said this week on its X account.
For her part, Martha Patricia Molina, a Nicaraguan researcher and author of multiple reports on abuses in the Catholic Church, spoke with the Voice of America and identified eight detained priests as: Frutos Constantino Valle Salmerón, Monsignor Ulises Vega Matamoros, Monsignor Edgar Sacasa Sierra, Victor Godoy, Jairo Pravia Flores, Marlon Velásquez, Fray Silvio Romero and Harvin Torrez.
“I attribute it to the hatred that the dictatorial couple Ortega-Murillo has for the Catholic faith. The dictatorship has carried out all illegal actions to eliminate the church, but they have not succeeded,” said Molina.
“I think they are fiercely attacking diocese by diocese, starting with Matagalpa in an attempt to eliminate it. More than 70% of its clergy are no longer physically carrying out their pastoral work in the territory of Matagalpa,” Molina added to VOA.
The Ortega government did not release the names of the seven priests sent to Rome.
What’s next?
Israel González, an expert on religious issues in Nicaragua, says that in light of this situation, one sees “greater repression.”
“The Catholic Church is widely recognized throughout Nicaraguan society. The voice of bishops and priests is heard, even by people of other faiths, so for the regime it is the enemy to be defeated,” he said.
With the seven priests exiled to the Vatican, the number of religious expelled from Nicaragua under the administration of Daniel Ortega now totals 46.
At the beginning of January this year, the bishop of Matagalpa, Monsignor Rolando José Álvarez, along with 18 other religious leaders were exiled and sent to the Vatican.
However, in October of last year, twelve Nicaraguan priests were also expelled from the country and sent to Rome.
Later, in February 2023, the Ortega government included eight religious figures in a group of 222 former political prisoners who were released and sent to the United States.
The tensions between Ortega and the Catholic Church began with protests against the Nicaraguan leader in 2018. From that year until January 2024, at least 19 priests were arrested and exiled.
The church sheltered protesters in its temples and Ortega accused them of being “coup plotters” and, during the political crisis, expelled Catholic missionaries, stripped priests of their Nicaraguan nationality and expelled Pope Francis’ representative in Nicaragua, the nuncio Waldemar Sommertag.
Pope Francis has called Ortega and his government a “Hitlerian dictatorship.”
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