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Nicaraguan priest Rafael Ríos Gadea said Friday that there is no religious persecution in Nicaragua, and that “when a crime is committed, the person who commits the crime pays, but it is not the Catholic Church.”
“Let us forget what many say, that there is religious persecution in Nicaragua,” said the priest during a special session of the National Assembly (Parliament) held in the municipality of La Concordia, province of Jinotega (north), where a tribute was paid to the Nicaraguan hero General Benjamin Zeledon.
“Religious persecution occurs when it is due to hatred of faith and all those who are children of God are persecuted,” continued the priest, who last June in Managua baptized a grandson of the president and vice president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, respectively.
“When a crime is committed, the person who commits the crime pays, but it is not the Church,” the prelate continued.
“We are all part of the Church and today we have to thank God, because thanks to heroes like Benjamín (Zeledón) today (in Nicaragua) we are at peace. Today we can pray to God and feel like children of God,” he added.
A total of 245 religious leaders have been forced into exile or expelled from Nicaragua since the social and political crisis broke out in April 2018, according to the study ‘Nicaragua: A persecuted Church?’, by exiled researcher Martha Patricia Molina.
The Nicaraguan president also accused the Holy See of having been “complicit with the Nazis” of Germany and the fascists of Spain and Italy in the last century.”
Ortega’s criticism of the Vatican came a day after Pope Francis encouraged the “beloved” people of Nicaragua to renew their “hope” in Jesus Christ, amid tense relations with the Ortega government and the imprisonment and expulsion of priests.
Diplomatic relations are suspended
Relations between the Ortega government and the Catholic Church are experiencing a period of great tension, characterized by the expulsion, imprisonment and denationalization of bishops and priests, the prohibition of religious activities and the suspension of diplomatic relations.
In August 2023, Ortega ordered the dissolution in the country of the Society of Jesus , the Jesuits, an order to which Pope Francis himself belongs, in addition to expropriating all of its assets.
Months earlier, the pontiff had lashed out at the Ortega regime, calling it a “gross dictatorship,” following the sentencing of Nicaraguan bishop Rolando Álvarez, one of three bishops deprived of his nationality.
The Nicaraguan government has agreed with the Holy See to release certain clerics imprisoned in the country and transfer them to the Vatican, as was the case in January with bishops Rolando Álvarez and Isidoro Mora, as well as 15 other priests and two seminarians.
The latest release and banishment was last August of a group of nine priests from the Diocese of Matagalpa (north) who were detained and under police surveillance at the Interdiocesan Seminary of Our Lady of Fatima, in Managua.
Nicaragua has been in crisis since April 2018, which has worsened after the November 2021 elections, in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term, his fourth consecutive term and his second alongside his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice president, with his main rivals in prison.
