The planned processions in Masaya, Nicaragua, honouring St. Michael the Archangel and St. Jerome have been outlawed by President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.
The National Police of the city of Masaya “have informed the Brotherhoods and Pastors of the Parishes of St. Michael the Archangel and St. Jerome, that for reasons of public security processions will not be allowed for the respective festivities of that city,” the Archdiocese of Managua stated in a statement on September 17.
“Remember that faith and devotion are a treasure that we carry in our hearts and that from there we can pay proper honour with the power of that ancestral legacy in our communities,” the archbishop urged “the devotees and those who have made pledges to the patron saints.”
According to the schedule of each parish in the separate churches, the Masses, novenas, and liturgical activities indicative of both feasts will take place.
The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, and St. Jerome were requested by the Archdiocese of Managua to “intercede and listen to the prayers [and] achieve healing for us from all diseases with the medicine of God.”
Church persecution in Nicaragua
A Catholic procession has previously been forbidden by the regime. The Marian Congress’ march in honour of Our Lady of Fatima was prohibited by decree of the dictatorship in August.
The Masaya St. Michael the Archangel parish has previously been under attack from the government. Paramilitary organizations with Ortega’s support assaulted protesters of the government’s policies in 2018. Father Edwing Román, a number of moms, and others embarked on a hunger strike in 2019 to denounce the Ortega police’s attacks on the local populace and the Church.
By a vote of 538 to 16 on September 15, the European Parliament approved a resolution calling for Rolando Lvarez, the bishop of Matagalpa, to be immediately released. Lvarez was taken from his chancery in Matagalpa by the regime’s police in the middle of the night, and he is currently being held under house arrest in Managua.
Father Oscar Benavidez of the Diocese of Siuna and Fathers Ramiro Tijerino, José Luis Diaz, Sadiel Eugarrios, and Ral González from the Diocese of Matagalpa is being detained at El Chipote, a jail in Managua notorious for torturing regime opponents.
The dictatorship has detained cinematographer Sergio Cárdenas, seminarians Darvin Leyva and Melqun Sequeira, and other members of the Diocese of Matagalpa in El Chipote.
Except for Benavidez, everyone else was taken into custody at the chancery in Matagalpa at about 3 a.m. on August 19 at the same time that police took lvarez into custody.
The radio stations owned by the Diocese of Matagalpa were forcefully shut down by the Sandinista government in August.
Other victims of the persecution include the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order established by St. Teresa of Calcutta, who were expelled from the country in July, and the apostolic nuncio to Nicaragua, Archbishop Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, who was removed from the nation in March.
Silvio Baez, a former auxiliary bishop of Managua, has been living in exile in the United States since it was revealed that Ortega’s regime had likely ordered his murder.
In Nicaragua, the Catholic Church has long faced rising persecution. As early as 2014, the bishops correctly predicted the Ortega government’s path toward dictatorship. The bishops have criticized the administration for using excessive force to stifle the opposition, starting in 2018 when it violently suppressed protestors calling for reform.
As “combined forces” of regular police, riot police, paramilitaries, and pro-government vigilantes assaulted anti-government protesters in Nicaragua, more than 350 people died and many were wounded. During the upheaval, at least eight churches were destroyed.
Bishops, priests, nuns, and ordinary believers were under increased pressure from the government since the Catholic Church backed the cause of the protesters.
Since his 15 years in office, Ortega has been openly antagonistic against the country’s Catholic Church. He claimed that bishops backed anti-government protests that his administration ruthlessly put down and was thus involved in a plot to overthrow him in 2018. The bishops have been referred to as “terrorists” and “devils in cassocks” by the president of Nicaragua.
In less than four years, the Nicaraguan Catholic Church has been the target of 190 attacks and desecrations, including a fire in the Managua Cathedral and police harassment and persecution of bishops and priests, according to a report titled “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church? (2018-2022)” written by attorney Martha Patricia Molina Montenegro, a member of the Pro-Transparency and Anti-Corruption Observatory.