Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes walks with pilgrims during an event for the Virgin of Fatima. The police had banned the march for internal security reasons. Reuters Photo / Mayor Valenzuela
The group of former presidents that make up the Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas (IDEA), including Maurizio Macri, Sebastián Piñera and José María Aznar, released a statement on the regime of Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo in Nicaragua where they denounce “aggravated persecutions of freedom of religion” and ask the intervention of Pope Francis.
“It is with deepened concern that we observe what is happening in Nicaragua under the primitive Ortega-Murillo dictatorshipthat after having persecuted and criminalized political and social leaders, as well as having radically reduced all freedom of expression and of the press, now moves towards the persecution of Catholic episcopal leaderspriests and nuns, even expelling them – as in the case of the emblematic Missionaries of Charity – from the national territory ”, stated in the large statement released this Wednesday.
The statement comes after the diocese of Siuna on Monday denounced the arrest and disappearance of one of its priests, amid tensions between the government of President Daniel Ortega and the Catholic Church of Nicaragua.
«On the afternoon of Sunday 14 August the parish priest Oscar Benavidezpastor of the Parish of the Holy Spirit ”, in the municipality of Mulukuku, in the Autonomous Region of the Caribbean of Northern Nicaragua, reported the diocese of Siuna in a statement.
The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, together with his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo. Photo Presidency of Nicaragua.
That jurisdiction of the Catholic Church said ignore the causes or the reasons for the arrest of the priest.
Former presidents have expressed their concern about “the church on fire and the savage destruction of the images of Catholic worship ”. “It advances along a line of destruction of the social and anthropological foundations that best resembles the Jewish book on fire, socialists and pacifists and entire libraries as supporters of the German National Socialist regime in 1933 ”.
In this sense, the former heads of state have urged public opinion in each of their countries to “To maintain a response committed to the rejection of this morbidity that threatens peace” and asked for the intervention of Pope francesco.
“We invite the different religious confessions to express their equal censorship; and, in particular, given what is happening under the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship, We expect a firm attitude of defense of the Nicaraguan people and their religious freedom by the SS. Francishead of the universal Catholic Church ”, they argued.
For the former signatory presidents, the aim of the Ortega regime in its confrontation with the Church is “to destroy the cultural and spiritual roots of the Nicaraguan people to leave them to anomie and make them easy prey to domination by destroying their dignity and fracturing them of their cultural roots. , as revealed by the recent closure of its emblematic Academy of Languages ”.
Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes walks with pilgrims during an event of the Virgin of Fatima after Nicaraguan police banned the procession citing internal security reasons. Reuters photo / Mayor Valenzuela
In turn, in the statement they argue that “the freedom of conscience and religion It is a structural part of the human rights and personality development of each individual ”.
“So it has happened throughout modern history and as stated in the various declarations on the rights of man and citizen, to the point of being indicated as a fundamental touchstone for the affirmation and preservation of peace, even in periods of destabilization and social adjustments such as those that mark the present ”, they added.
In this sense, they held that “religious freedom, the worship of which is generally exercised collectively and in public spaces, touching upon crucial aspects of the exercise of other rights, including political ones, such as the rights of association, assembly and it has given rise to circulation and residence in contemporary experience persecution of the population and communities for religious reasons from states and governments that have strayed from their commitments to freedom.
The text bears the signature of the former presidents: Maurizio Macri; Oscar Arias (Costa Rica); José María Aznar (Spain), Nicolás Ardito Barletta (Panama); Felipe Calderon (Mexico); Rafael Angel Calderon (Mexico); Laurca Chinchilla (Costa Rica); Alfredo Cristiani (El Salvador); Ivan Duca (Cordoba); Vicente Fox (Mexico); Federico Franco (Paraguay); Eduardo Frei (Chile); Lucio Gutierrez (Ecuador); Osvaldo Hurtado (Ecuador).
Former presidents Luis Alberto Lacalle (Uruguay); Jamil Mahuad (Ecuador); Mireya Moscoso (Panama); Carlos Mesa (Bolivia); Andres Pastrana (Colombia); Sebastian Pinera (Chile); Jorge Tuto Quiroga (Bolivia); Miguel Angel Rodriguez (Costa Rica); Giulio Maria Sanguinetti (Uruguay); Luis Guillermo Solis (Costa Rica); Alvaro Uribe (Colombia); and Juan Carlos Wasmosy (Paraguay).
Three priests arrested in Nicaragua in less than a year
The diocese of Siuna invited the Catholic faithful to join in prayer for Benavidez, “whose only mission is and has been to announce the good news of Jesus Christ, which is word, life and salvation for all”.
For its part, the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh) claimed that the priest was arbitrarily detained.
“According to information, he was picked up from his vehicle and taken on a (police) patrol to an unknown destination,” Cenidh said in a statement.
The crisis in Nicaragua worsened after the controversial elections last November in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term. AP photo
Benavidez is the third priest arrested so far this year in Nicaragua, and the ninth who is in police custody, including Msgr. Rolando Álvarez and five other priests who have been locked up since the last 4 in the episcopal palace of the diocese of Matagalpa (north).
Siuna was the first diocese to offer its public support to Álvarez, whom the National Police accuse of trying to “organize violent groups”, although so far it has not provided evidence.
The friction between Ortega and the Catholic Church
The arrest of this priest takes place in the midst of a series of actions by the Sandinista government against the Nicaraguan Catholic Church, including the ban on the Archdiocese of Managua to carry out a procession with the pilgrim image of the Virgin of Fatima.
Even the confinement of Msgr. Álvarez, together with five priests, three seminarians and two lay people, in the provincial episcopal see of Matagalpa, besieged by special police forces.
In addition, the expulsion of a group of missionaries from the Mother Teresa of Calcutta order, the closure of eight Catholic radios, the cancellation of the subscription television programming of three Catholic channels and the forced entry and raid of a parish.
Mobilization against the Ortega regime in front of the Nicaraguan embassy in Mexico. Photo Reuters / Edgar Garrido.
Ortega called the Nicaraguan bishops “terrorists” who acted as mediators of a national dialogue that has sought a peaceful solution to the crisis that the country has been going through since April 2018.
The crisis in Nicaragua intensified after the controversial elections last November in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth, fourth consecutive and second term along with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice president, with his main contenders in prison.
Relations between the Sandinistas and the Nicaraguan Catholic Church have been marked by friction and distrust over the past 43 years.
The Catholic community represents 58.5% of Nicaragua’s 6.5 million inhabitants, according to the latest national census.
Source: Clarin
