In a tweet calling for an end to the persecution of the Church being out by President Daniel Ortega’s administration, an expatriate priest revealed that a Catholic priest was detained and incarcerated on October 13 in the Nicaraguan city of Managua.
According to Father Uriel Vallejos, who has been living in exile in Italy since September, the arrest of Father Enrique Martnez Gamboa, the most recent Catholic priest to be jailed, amounted to an abduction.
The parish priest of Managua’s St. Martha’s Church was abducted yesterday around 5:00 o’clock. The Catholic Church and Father Enrique Martnez G. seek the release of the oppressed and an end to the persecution of the clergy and the Church. Rights, liberties, and democracy! Vallejos wrote on his profile.
On its Twitter page, the human rights group “Nicaragua Nunca Más” said that Martnez’s whereabouts are unknown.
“With this arbitrary arrest, the number of priests deprived of their liberty grows to 11, including Monsignor [Bishop] Rolando lvarez, who has been unjustly under “house arrest” for 72 days,” the group claims.
The organization referred to President Daniel Ortega, his wife, and Vice President Rosario Murillo as the “Ortega Murillo government,” and said that “religious persecution against the Catholic Church continues under their dictatorship.”
The group called for “the end of persecution, the freeing of the priests and of the more than 219 political prisoners in Nicaragua” in another tweet.
Father scar Danilo Benavidez from the Diocese of Siuna, Father Ramiro Tijerino Chávez, the vicar of the Cathedral of Matagalpa, Father José Luis Daz Cruz, and his predecessor, Father Sadiel Antonio Eugarrios Cano, are among the other priests imprisoned at the El Chipote prison, where political prisoners are tortured and wrongfully detained.
Deacon Ral Antonio Vega, seminarians Melkin Centeno and Darvin Leiva Mendoza, as well as layperson Sergio Cadena Flores, are all present at El Chipote.