Managua, January 1, 2024 (KAP/KNA) In Nicaragua, the left-wing autocratic Sandinista regime continues to take action against the Catholic Church. As reported by local media, another five clerics were arrested shortly before the New Year. This brought to 14 the number of church representatives arrested in one week. As reported by the portal “100% Noticias”, citing Nicaraguan auxiliary bishop Silvio Baez, who lives in exile in the USA, the five clerics now detained all come from the archdiocese of the capital Managua.
“The Sandinista dictatorship launched a cruel hunt for priests this week, detaining several of them, in addition to two bishops who were already in prison,” quoted Baez, who Pope Francis asked to leave Nicaragua in 2019 for security reasons. The anger of Ortega's criminal dictatorship, directed against the Church, continues, said Baez, who called on the rest of the world not to abandon the Church in Nicaragua and to show solidarity.
The wave of arrests followed a recent verbal attack by Vice President Rosario Murillo, wife of President Daniel Ortega. In state media controlled by the Ortega family, Murillo said Church officials were “demons who sow hatred in Nicaraguan society.”
Around Christmas, Bishop Isidoro del Carmen Mora Ortega, of the Diocese of Siuna, on the Caribbean coast, was arrested by the police. He reportedly supported the already arrested and convicted Bishop Rolando Alvarez in a sermon. The UN Human Rights Office for Central America then condemned on the short message service X, formerly Twitter, the “forced disappearance of Bishop Isidoro Mora in Nicaragua eight days ago and the new wave of arrests of religious people”.
The serious crisis in Nicaragua began in 2018, when students took to the streets against slash-and-burn agriculture in a natural reserve that had been tolerated or even started by the left-wing government. Protests quickly spread across the country. The Ortega regime repressed the demonstrations with brutal force, priests and bishops opened their churches so that protesters could find protection from police bullets.