After the exile of 7 priests to Rome, the Nicaraguan dictatorship has detained two other priests and 2 laywomen in Estelí and Matagalpa, both dioceses officially led by the exiled bishop Rolando Álvarez, who was exiled and has been in the Vatican since January of this year. anus.
According to the local newspaper Mosaicon Sunday, August 11, the police arrested Father Denis Martínez García, when he was on his way to celebrate Mass in Matagalpa. His whereabouts are unknown.
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The priest was ordained a deacon on January 15, 2011 and received priestly ordination on June 29 of the same year.
He was a trainer at the Nuestra Señora de Fátima Interdiocesan Seminary in Managua and on weekends he went to Matagalpa to celebrate Mass due to the serious decrease in priests in the diocese, due to the persecution of the dictatorship.
Mosaic It also points out that on Saturday, August 10, Father Leonel Balmaceda, parish priest of the Jesús de la Caridad parish, in the municipality of La Trinidad, in the Diocese of Estelí, was arrested. This priest was ordained on July 13, 1996 in Matagalpa.
2 women kidnapped by the Nicaraguan dictatorship
Also on Saturday, August 10, the Police went to the home of two lay women and detained them apparently without cause, according to Mosaic. Relatives have no information about his whereabouts.
The first was Carmen María Sáenz Martínez, master in Canon Law, who collaborated in the Diocese of Matagalpa with the causes of marital annulment.
The second was Lesbia Gutiérrez, former coordinator of the Urban and Rural Financial Support Program (Proafur), through which the closed Cáritas Diocesanas de Matagalpa offered credit to small producers.
Nicaraguan dictatorship intends to “exterminate” the Catholic Church in Matagalpa
These arrests occur just 3 days after the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, exiled seven priests to Rome, six of whom belong to the diocese of Matagalpa.
Martha Patricia Molina, researcher and author of the report Nicaragua: A persecuted Church? He referred to the arrest of Father Martínez and said in la red social X that “the Sandinista dictatorship intends to exterminate the presence of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of #Matagalpa.”
Matagalpa is the diocese of Mons. Rolando Álvarez, bishop, defender of human rights and critic of the dictatorship, who was arrested, confined to his home and sentenced to 26 years in prison in a questioned judicial process.
He was deported in January of this year to Rome, where he now lives in exile.
Estelí has not had a bishop since mid-2021. Bishop Álvarez was then appointed as Apostolic Administrator, and in his absence Father Frutos Valle was appointed as administrator to everythingin charge of looking after diocesan assets. This priest has also been detained by the dictatorship.
Walter Sanchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.