SAINT JOSEPH. The Nicaraguan regime ordered the arrest of five other priests of the Archdiocese of Managua, detained in the last few hours by the National Police, bringing the total number of religious imprisoned in the country to 15, including two bishops, denounced the bishop of Managua, Silvio Báez, and the exiled lawyer and researcher Martha Patricia Molina.
The Nicaraguan priests detained between Friday night and yesterday morning are Silvio Fonseca, Mykel Monterrey, Raúl Zamora, Gerardo Rodríguez and Miguel Mántica, all from the Archdiocese of Managua, according to a report by Molina, author of the study ‘Nicaragua:
A persecuted Church?’
“This week the Sandinista dictatorship has unleashed a fierce hunt against priests, taking several of them to prison, in addition to two bishops who were already imprisoned,” said Báez, who was ordained by Pope Francis. leave Nicaragua in 2019 for security reasons, amid tensions between the Government of President Daniel Ortega and the Catholic Church.
According to sources from the Nicaraguan Church, the Government asked that Álvarez’s name not be mentioned in the homilies and the detainees refused, arguing that as Christians they had to pray for the prisoners.
Báez, who resides in Miami and whom the authorities declared a “traitor to the country” and stripped of his nationality, said through the social network X that “the fury of the criminal Ortega dictatorship unleashed against the Church continues.”
The relationship between the Church and the government deteriorated amid the 2018 protests, after Ortega accused religious people of supporting opponents in what he considered an attempted coup d’état.
An investigation by lawyer Molina maintains that since 2018 there have been 740 attacks against the Church and that 176 priests and nuns were expelled, banished or prohibited from entering the country.
MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR
The wave of arrests coincides with the reactivation of functions of the Ministry of the Interior and Nicaraguan activists in exile foresee an increase in “repression” with the agency, which seeks to “prevent, neutralize and end any activity aimed at destroying or undermining order.” constitutional of the country, established by the Revolution.”
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The Interior Ministry, founded in 1979, was in charge of State security and the Fifth Directorate (in charge of counterintelligence, infiltration and operations abroad), exercised tight control against opponents, religious people, businessmen, journalists, activists. of human rights and critics during the first Sandinista Government.
According to the digital platform Confidencial, this portfolio “was in charge of spying, persecuting, imprisoning and murdering those considered enemies of the revolution.”