In New Year’s Day Mass, Pope Francis mentions Nicaragua’s ‘bishops and priests deprived of their freedom’

In an unusual gesture, Pope Francis alluded during the New Year’s Day Mass to the detention of priests and seminarians in Nicaragua, where the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has accelerated the persecution against members of the Catholic Church since December 20. “Bishops and priests have been deprived of their freedom in recent days. I express to them, to their families and to the entire Church of the country, my closeness in prayer,” Francis said during the traditional Angelus prayer from the window of his office in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. “Let us pray for Nicaragua,” the Pope said. Thousands of faithful listened to him in St. Peter’s Square as Francis called for peace and reconciliation and asked for “dialogue to overcome difficulties” for Nicaragua.

Last Thursday, the Nicaraguan regime detained Monsignor Carlos Áviles, vicar of the archdiocese of Managua, the last detainee in a list that includes 12 other priests and two seminarians in a raid that began on December 20, coinciding with the start of the Christmas celebrations. Among those arrested are well-known priests, such as Monsignors Silvio Fonseca and Miguel Mántica, in addition to Áviles. There is also Father Pablo Villafranca. Meanwhile, Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who refused exile in the United States in October, has been sentenced to 26 years in prison for treason.

“This week the Sandinista dictatorship has unleashed a fierce hunt against priests, taking several of them to prison, in addition to two bishops who were already imprisoned,” the auxiliary bishop of Managua, Silvio Báez, exiled in the United States, denounced last week. “I beg the bishops and the episcopal conferences of the world not to abandon us at this moment, to pray for the Church of Nicaragua and to show solidarity and raise your voices denouncing this persecution by the dictatorship against our Church!” This Monday, it was Pope Francis who responded to his request.

The Legal Defense Unit (UDJ), which defends political prisoners, warned that the Christmas arrests add to the sentence against Rolando Álvarez, who refused to accept the exile ordered by Ortega last October to other members of the Church. That month, the regime released a dozen priests it held as political prisoners and sent them on a plane to Rome. However, the expulsion of members of the Church began in 2018 with Monsignor Báez, one of the most critical voices against the authoritarian drift and human rights violations in Nicaragua.

Nicaragua broke relations with the Holy See in 2023, after the expulsion of the nuncio (the Vatican’s ambassador) at the time, Waldamer Stanislaw Sommertag, in March 2022. In August of last year, the government canceled the legal status of the Society of Jesus Association of Nicaragua. Ortega’s argument was that the Jesuits “did not report their financial statements for the years 2020, 2021 and 2022.” A week earlier, the regime had confiscated the assets of the Central American University (UCA), administered by the religious order for more than 60 years in Nicaragua.

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