Director of Nicaragua will raise: hope is stronger than power

Spanish journalist Fernando de Haro, director of the documentary Nicaragua will raisethat exposes religious persecution under the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, said that the Christian hope “is more powerful than power.”

“I have been documenting religious persecution in many corners of the planet for 12 years. In Africa, in the Middle East, in China, in India, and suddenly I realized that the persecution that occurred in Nicaragua was one of the most important persecutions in the world against religious freedom and that this persecution is counting little ” Said of Haro in an interview with Ewtn News.

The director of “Nicaragua will raise”, documentary that was recently released in Madrid, explained that “against what may seem, this documentary is full of hope.”

On the name of Haro, he stressed that “it is a phrase that two of the protagonists of the documentary, two religious of Mother Teresa de Calcutta, say that after having a lot of pain the exile to which they were forced, one of them He ends saying this phrase, ‘Nicaragua will raise’.

“It is not a voluntary phrase, it is not a phrase of an empty optimism, it is the phrase or is the judgment that can be made, the assessment after having found and having reported in this documentary how the force of Christian hope, the Force of consciousness, the strength of people who do not surrender, is more powerful than power, ”he explained.

In July 2022, the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship expelled 18 missionary religious of charity from Nicaragua-the congregation founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta-who were welcomed in Costa Rica, where they currently reside.

The Spanish journalist added: “We will see when the dictatorial regime of Nicaragua falls, but in fact this hope that nests in many hearts, is already overcoming. That faith that the sisters have too. ”

The dictatorship of Nicaragua persecutes the Catholic Church with ferocity for some years. The report Nicaragua: a persecuted churchof the researcher Martha Patricia Molina, accounts for 971 attacks of the regime between 2018 and the end of 2024.

Fernando de Haro also explained that it has been difficult to find people willing to speak, “because everyone is afraid. I do not mean only those who live in Nicaragua, but also to exiles, especially in Costa Rica, who fear being attacked by some command that has crossed the border. ”

Similarly, “exiles in Spain, exiled in the United States are afraid that if they denounce the situation, that can be used as a reprisal formula within their own families,” he added.

“Power drives you crazy “

On the story of the sisters of Mother Teresa, the director stressed that “they are the symbol of how power drives you crazy.” “Mother Teresa’s sisters cannot be accused in any case of being behind a political project, of being behind an ideological project. They only help the most disadvantaged people, the poor, women who need assistance. ”

The journalist commented that another testimony that impacted him was that of the young German Lester, who was in the torture prison of El Chipote in Managua, “a prison that has a punishment cells, and that all the hardness of the prison mature personally “, in addition to having a” strengthened “faith.

He and others, the director continued, “Christianly, they have grown a lot. And that is surprising because power has not been able to. ”

How to help Nicaragua?

De Haro explains that “the first thing is to know what is happening”, to make it known with others, because the persecution in Nicaragua “can be compared perhaps with that of China.”

“Then collecting the value of these people who are not martyrs of blood, but they are people who are suffering for their faith, and I think that is a great wealth for everyone. (…) Then denounce, and then the one who knows how to pray, or can pray, to pish, is also very important ”.

Update