2023-04-28 15:20:41
The traditional Tope de los Santos that takes place every April 24 in San Marcos, Carazo, this year was limited to the atrium of the parish, in a new sample of the persecution and prohibitions ordered by the Daniel Ortega regime against the Catholic Church. Three days earlier, the dictatorship’s propaganda media promoted a revival vigil, led by Pastor Omar Duarte, of the Ríos de Agua Viva International Ministry, in the Plaza de la Fe.
“The images released showed hundreds of evangelicals expressing their faith, which they have the right – as every citizen of this country should have – but they do so when they don’t let us express our beliefs as Catholics,” he denounces. Magalya promising woman who has been dancing to the saints in Carazo for 27 years.
Magaly regrets having been limited to dancing just as much at the top as in the procession. She has been doing it ever since her mother made that promise “if she saved me from a severe disease that affected me.” Since then, she claims that she has not failed San Marcos. “This year, although I danced less, I did it with great devotion,” she insists.
“I saw that people commented on networks that the shepherds did their acts surrounded by the chayopalos (as the metallic trees ordered to be placed by the vice president, Rosario Murillo, are known) and that the people see as support from those shepherds for a criminal dictatorship”, he reflects.
The Ortega dictatorship began 2023 by banning the main Catholic religious festivities in most Nicaraguan municipalities, including Holy Week processions. In addition, they maintain surveillance and sieges in many Catholic temples.
Ortega has intensified the persecution of the Catholic Church and imposed police surveillance and its operators in the different parishes of the country, where the priests silently endure sieges and threats, while in the Jorge Navarro Penitentiary System, known as La Modelo, The Bishop of Matagalpa, Monsignor Rolando José Álvarez, pays an illegal sentence of 26 years and four months imposed by an Ortega court, after refusing to be exiled.
However, the regime has authorized the holding of concerts and vigils by evangelical churches. Even several of them. Like Pastor Omar Duarte, from Ríos de Agua Viva, he has lent them squares and public buildings for their activities.
“Regime supports its cronies and sycophants”
The lawyer and researcher Martha Patricia Molina, who has documented the attacks of the dictatorship against the Catholic Church, assures that the support they are providing to the activities of the evangelicals “is due to the fact that the main evangelical leaders, not the community in general, They have been openly accomplices of dictators, they are their cronies and also their flatterers”.
“These pastors know that this flirtation with the regime pays off for them,” he says. However, he admits that part of the evangelical community “has been attacked by the dictatorship on a lesser scale” especially “when they discover that the pastor does not openly support the crimes against humanity that are being committed in the country.”
Molina points out that Nicaraguans “without any exclusion have the right to express our religious beliefs in public and in private,” because “even though the State does not have an official religion,” the Political Constitution protects that right.
“But the Ortega-Murillo public administration has curtailed it by placing its whims above the Magna Carta and doing that is a crime.”
At the beginning of 2023, Molina assessed that this year would be “disastrous” in repressive terms against the Catholic Church. In addition, he stressed that Ortega “has the heartless and illogical intention of eliminating the Catholic faith from the country” because it is the only institution “that, in the light of the gospel, is announcing and denouncing all the arbitrariness and evil that the dictatorship commits.”
Sandinista youth in evangelical activities
On August 7, 2022, the Sandinista Youth (JS), one of the main repressive arms of citizen protests in the country, promoted a Christian concert” together with more than 100 evangelical pastors.
The event was held at the Alexis Argüello Sports Center and had the support of the Ministry of Youth and the Mayor’s Office of Managua.
In addition, the JS has promoted other evangelistic events in various municipalities in Nicaragua, such as San Rafael del Sur.
“It is excellent that the evangelical brothers are supported, but it is unfortunate that it is when they try to silence the prophetic voice of the Catholic Church and the worst thing is that they keep silent in the face of these terrible outrages,” laments “Orlando”, a priest from Carazo , who requests anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Father “Orlando” points out that the Catholic Church “is living its hardest days”, despite the fact that when Ortega returned to power he promised not to attack priests again.
A “changing” relationship with evangelicals
An investigation carried out by the digital medium the magnifying glass revealed in 2019 the economic benefit obtained by at least 94 evangelical entities since the return to power of Daniel Ortega, in 2007.
The report identified that Reverend Neftalí Cortez, president of the National Council of Evangelical Churches of Nicaragua (CNIEN), received $341,262 via the General Budget of the Republic. The highest amount of the 94 congregations (55 organizations and 39 churches) funded.
Likewise, the Association of Evangelical Christian Chaplains led by Pastor Germán Jaén Somarriba and to which Pastors Luis Mendoza, Francisco Meléndez and Juan José Vanegas belong, received $253,510 that year. In June 2018, these four evangelical leaders called for peace and reconciliation in line with the official discourse, after having started the massacre against the citizen protests.
On April 26, 2019, the son of the dictatorial couple, Laureano Ortega Murillo, participated in the “Heal our land” vigil, which was also attended by the mayor of Managua, Reyna Rueda.
Great gathering of Faith, Strength, Adoration and Devotion in our Lord Jesus Christ! To him the Glory and Honor! Nicaragua of Jesus Christ! https://t.co/VuQ6GOI4nh
— Laureano Ortega Murillo (@LaureanoOrtegaM) April 27, 2019
In this regard, former deputy Eliseo Núñez, opined that this sudden “religious conversion”, because before they were watched at masses, “is a game where the only thing that is clear is that they have no principles or ideologies.”
“Ortega understands that the evangelical Church does not have a defined hierarchy. And she is a scoundrel what she is doing with the evangelicals, wanting to paint them as if they are all her followers. She is taking advantage of the opportunism of a few pastors to be able to give that image, ”she said in statements to La Prensa.
On March 21 of this year, a “Pastoral Letter from the National Council of Evangelical Pastors of Nicaragua” in which they classify Ortega as a victim “of the imperial power” of the United States.
“The battle for control of the soul of Nicaragua and its people is a spiritual battle and must be resolved with spiritual weapons. The root of the problem is not in the struggle for power between the Government of Nicaragua and the opponents supported by exogenous forces that have historically afflicted the people of Nicaragua for more than 10 generations,” they emphasize in the letter.
But the Ortega regime’s treatment of the evangelical community has been “changeable,” admits Félix, a former pastor of a small church in Granada.
“They help you, but in return they want you to be unconditional to them, that when they demand that you praise them, you do it, when they ask you to attack someone, you also obey. Otherwise you are his enemy ”, he details.
In June 2022, the National Police prohibited the commemoration of the 453rd anniversary of the translation of the Bible into Spanish in some parts of the country, religious sources denounced at the time.
“At the national level there is an orientation that there is no permission to march, nor concentration in celebration of the day of the Bible, the same thing that they are doing with the Catholic Church because they are prohibiting all massive public activity in the streets,” declared on that date a pastor under anonymity to 100% News.
On that occasion, the National Council of Evangelical Pastors of Nicaragua circulated a letter indicating that this was due to “guidance from the civil authorities,” who had told them that the reason was “the safety of the participants.”
Also among the canceled and confiscated NGOs and universities are several that were owned by evangelical leaders, including the Adventist University of Nicaragua.
“They attack anyone who does not submit to their orders and pay homage to them,” explains Father “Orlando.”
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