Pope Leo XIV will be a champion of faith for the people and the Catholic Church in Nicaragua

“I think that Pope León is going to be a true lion, defender, champion of the faith of the Nicaraguan people, with the strength of a lion and with the humility of a lamb,” says Arturo McFields Yescas, former ambassador of Nicaragua before the OAS and today exiled for denouncing the excesses of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo.

In statements to ACI Press, McFields commented that now, with Pope Leo XIV “there is a lot of hope, particularly in the people of Nicaragua, in a church that has been persecuted, besieged and imprisoned by a dictatorship, in which we have seen how people are imprisoned, but faith is still free and is still strengthened in the midst of persecution.”

Since 2018, the Catholic Church in Nicaragua suffers a fierce persecution by the Ortega-Murillo regime, which has banned processions in Lent and Holy Week, has expelled a large number of priests-including four bishops-religious, has canceled the legal personality of various Catholic institutions such as Caritas, the solidarity arm of the Church; and that has closed other institutions such as the Central American University; Jesuit Studies Center; to mention only some of the many attacks of the dictatorship.

“I think better times are coming, although there is a dictatorship that does not respect spiritual laws or earthly laws,” McFields continued. “The battle of the faith that Pope Francis began to continue: it is a spiritual war in which to remain standing you only need to be on my knees and believe, because for God there is nothing impossible.”

Cardinal of Nicaragua asks to pray for Leo XIV

In a video posted by the Archdiocese of Managua on May 19, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes stressed that Pope León “is a humble man, a simple man, especially a listening man. I Whenever I talked with him, I looked at him that I kept seeing, he stayed a moment in silence and then reply.

“I invite you for every night, every morning, we can look at the crucifix and raise our prayer to have that docility towards the spirit, because I am convinced of one thing and I want you to also be convinced, who leads to the Church is the Holy Spirit and the Pope will marry the pauses that the Holy Spirit will be illuminated,” he encouraged.

That Leo XIV follows “as Pope Francis very close to Nicaragua”

Martha Patricia Molina, a Nicaraguan lawyer and researcher in exile, told ACI Press that “we have received with joy and hope the new Pontiff, Pedro’s successor, Pope Leo XIV, and we hope he will continue as Pope Francis very close to the people of Nicaragua, to all human rights violations that the Ortega Murillo dictatorship in our country is committing to each moment.”

Molina is the author of the report Nicaragua: a persecuted churchthat in its sixth edition of December 2024 denounced a total of 971 attacks of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship against the Catholic Church in the Central American country, in the last six years.

Molina also said that “the Vatican will always ask for dialogue, peace, a fair dialogue, a true dialogue, a transparent dialogue, but unfortunately the dictatorship is never willing to give in if it has no interest in between.”

The investigator also denounced that “the dictatorship is not interested in dialogue with anyone, because they have at their disposal the Nicaraguan army, the National Police and more than 80 thousand paramilitaries who have green light to kill Nicaraguans.”

In any case, he concluded, “we are like the united Catholic people of Nicaragua. We are facing the expectation of the entire pastoral agenda of His Holiness, we are praying for him as a Church and we are very happy that he is a man close to the Latin American people, he speaks Spanish, he knows firsthand what Nicaragua has suffered.”

Leo XIV is no stranger to the suffering of the Church in Nicaragua

Félix Maradiaga, president of the Foundation for the Freedom of Nicaragua and former presidential ex -candidate, stressed that “Leo XIV is no stranger to the suffering of our Church: in 2022, in 2022 Being bishop in Peru, he signed a letter of solidarity that demanded ‘justice and democracy’ for Nicaragua, raising the voice when many silenced. ”

In statements to ACI Press, Maradiaga, from exile, highlighted the trajectory of Pope Leo XIV, “especially his close commitment to the peoples of Latin America, it is an encouraging sign for those of us who believe in the power of faith as a force of social transformation, particularly in contexts of repression and institutional violence.”

“We do not expect” it would not be appropriate to pretend – that the current Pope leads political battles that correspond to the laity. The struggle for freedom in Nicaragua and in any nation is, above all, task of its citizens: of us, the faithful and civil society, in the political and civic sand, “he said.

The moral authority of the Bishop of Rome

When a regime “imprisoned priests for preaching the gospel, nuns destroyed for serving the poor or hostigue to faithful for expressing their faith, we are not facing ‘politics matters’, but before flagrant violations of freedom of conscience that cry out to heaven. That is where the moral authority of the Bishop of Rome must be felt more strongly.”

Maradiaga also indicated to ACI Press that “diplomatic silence can be understandable in certain conjunctures of international politics, but when it extends against systematic injustice, it becomes deafening and scandalous. As a layman committed, I urgently consider that the Holy See finds a firmer tone before the Nicaraguan tragedy.”

Finally, the former political prisoner stressed that “the figure of Leo XIV raises hope precisely because we trust that it will be a shepherd. A shepherd of souls who understands that in Nicaragua his sheep are beaten by tyranny and that he will do his best to comfort and defend them spiritually.”