Nicaraguan dictatorship kidnaps priest of the Catholic Church and expels him

The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and his “co-president” and wife, Rosario Murillo, kidnapped and expelled from Nicaragua Father Floriano Ceferino Vargas, priest of the diocese of Bluefields.

As noted on the social network Medardo Mairenaformer peasant leader now in exile, “Father Floriano Ceferino Vargas, parish priest of the Church of San Martín de Porres in Nueva Guinea, has been exiled by the Ortega-Murillo Sandinista regime.”

After pointing out that “exile is a crime against humanity,” Mairena indicated that the priest’s destination country is “the sister republic of Panama.”

In statements to EWTN Noticias, lawyer and researcher Martha Patricia Molina, author of the report Nicaragua: A persecuted Church?which accounts for 870 attacks by the Ortega and Murillo dictatorship against the Catholic Church between 2018 and 2024, noted that it is not known why Father Vargas was kidnapped.

However, Molina said, “generally the kidnappings of priests and bishops are without any reason. “Just because you are religious in Nicaragua, the dictatorship can kidnap you.”

The author of the report also indicated that it is possible that the priest had made “some comment that they (the dictatorship) consider hostile to the supposed revolution, which at every moment they say must be defended.”

The researcher also commented that, in the midst of everything, it is good to know that the priest “is not going to be in the prisons of Nicaragua, where more than 40 mechanisms of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are practiced.”

The priest would have been arrested after celebrating Mass in his parish.

The information about the kidnapping of Father Vargas was released the same day that Pope Francis sent a letter to the Catholics of Nicaragua, in which he encourages them and reminds them that faith and hope “perform miracles.”

Concern for the Catholic Church in Nicaragua has also been expressed by the bishops of Central America who have called, for this December 8, Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, a day of prayer for Catholics in the country that suffers the repression and persecution of the dictatorship of Ortega and Murillo.