Researcher accuses Nicaragua dictatorship of erasing traces of persecution against the Catholic Church

A researcher specialized in the attacks of the dictatorship against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua has denounced that Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo ordered to “erase all evidence” of an armed attack of the government in 2018 against a Catholic parish.

On July 13, 2018, the Sandinista Police and the Nicaraguan army shot the divine parish of the Archdiocese of Managua for hours. The attack occurred when there were students, national and foreign journalists and two priests in the temple.

According to the Nicaraguan newspaper Article 66during the attack, two young people —Gerald Vásquez and Francisco Flores – were killed inside the temple by snipers who were around the Church.

Two other people were injured. Two priests, Raúl Zamora and Erick Alvarado, risked their lives to attend the injured and protect those inside.

Martha Patricia Molina, lawyer and researcher at exile, author of the report Nicaragua: a persecuted churchwhich accounts for almost 1,000 attacks by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo against the Catholic Church, he told ACI Press that he considers that the restoration has been given by mandate of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.

Molina stressed that in 2018 and after the attack against the Church “the Archdiocese of Managua decided to leave the signs on the walls of the parish, but recently this order was declined and it was sent to completely restore the exterior. In a second phase it will be restored internally, because in the internal there are also signs, even bullets embedded in the walls.”

For Molina there is no doubt: it has been a mandate of the Ortega and Murillo regime.

“This is obviously an order of the Sandinista dictatorship because they want to erase all evidence of that terrorist attack that they committed at that time, but the truth is that the evidence and evidence are alive in the mind and heart of each Nicaraguan and also in the mind of the international community,” said the lawyer.

“I think they (the Ortega – Murillo dictatorship intend to erase this disastrous crime they committed only by painting and repairing the walls, but the damage was already done.”

“I think that at some point, when Nicaragua shines democracy, they will have to pay: the people who made or gave this order of attack and be judged so that it does not reign in Nicaragua, once again, impunity and oblivion,” he concluded.

ACI Press contacted the Archdiocese of Managua to consult whether the restoration of the divine parish mercy has been its own initiative or if it has been carried out by order of the dictatorship. Until the publication of this news no response has been received.

ACI Press also contacted the Government of Nicaragua to ask if the restoration was given by the regime and has not received an answer.

Molina also published in X a video in which a national police car is appreciated behind a red truck, which the investigator says is driven by the “Cardinal Leopoldo José Brenes (Archbishop of Managua), all Catholics know it. We are always persecuted by the Blueths, the criminal guard that besides and permanently monitors the Catholic Church.”

“I do not think they take care of him, they watch who calls and with whom they meet and then pass the report to the corresponding office of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship. In their home the guards are also maintained, they take pictures of the people who enter and leave, they also ask for vehicle and license to register and carry a control of the visitors,” adds Molina.