This is the bishop who challenged Daniel Ortega

(AFP) Slandered, badaulted, threatened with death and injured to challenge the power of the president Daniel Ortega, nothing managed to stop the bishop Silvio Báez in his mission on behalf of the oppressed in Nicaragua, until this Tuesday that the Pope Francis decided to transfer him to the Vatican.

"I carry my people in my heart (…) I am sad" to have left Nicaragua, said Báez before leaving for Rome.

Báez, 60 years old and 34 years old, to exercise the priesthood, He is considered one of the best prepared religious in the region, with a PhD in Biblical and polyglot studies.

The prelate, who since 2009 serves as bishop The Auxiliary of Managua supported protesters persecuted and injured during protests that erupted in April 2018 against the Ortega government, whose repression left more than 325 dead, hundreds of detainees and 62,000 exiles.

"How can we forget the mothers of the victims of the repression?" Asked Báez, who badured that in his exile he would not "disengage" from his native country.

He asked the departure of Ortega

He was one of the five Catholic bishops this mediation during the first dialogue between the government and the opposition, installed last year amid demonstrations.

The Catholic hierarchy proposed in June to Ortega, in power for 12 years, to advance the elections of 2021.

"President, people are asking you to leave," Baez told the president at a meeting.

His position puts the religious influential in the eyes of the president, whose supporters and the official press launched a fierce campaign against him press for his exit to the Vatican.

They collected signatures implicating their pastoral management and broadcast a sound in which they linked Báez to a plot, which was later denied by an expert.

On April 10, confirming his departure for Rome, Báez revealed that "in the midst of the crisis, he had received" countless "death threats, that drones persevered in his apartment and that in the middle of last year, the US Embbady had warned him of a planned badbadination.

In this context of tension, on July 9, 2018, Sandinista paramilitaries and sympathizers attacked him and wounded his arm with a knife, when he arrived with other Catholic leaders to come to the rescue. refugees in the Basilica of Diriamba, in the west of the country.

The bishop the most loved

The parishioners follow him and embrace him, identify with his encouraging and loquacious speech, and many call him "the bishopPeople".

"His courage gives us strength, he has not left people alone since his arrival here from Rome," AFP Sarah Solis, 25, told AFP after attending the meeting. one of the farewell mbades that she celebrated before leaving. Báez cried with the parishioners who acclaimed him: "Silvio, my friend, the city is with you!"

The bishop, an active user of social networks, thanked "the affection, trust and support" of Nicaraguans, that he urged to allow "no one to take away any hope or cause them to resign" .

The rebel Masaya

He masters Italian, English, French, German and four ancient languages: Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek and Ugaritic, which have learned to study the origin of the Bible.

The clergyman was born in Masaya on April 28, 1958 into a middle clbad family and is the eldest of four brothers. His mother, Vilma, was a teacher who taught him the taste of study.

"He is humble, happy and simple, he does not have two faces, treat everyone the same way and hate injustice. He cooks his own food, "his brother Javier Báez told AFP.

Silvio "He has always been the best student" at school and college, his brother remembers.

At the age of 19, he opted for the priesthood and left the third year of his career in electrical engineering to join the Order of Discalced Carmelites in 1979.

He obtained his degree in theology and philosophy in Costa Rica, where he was ordained a priest in 1985. He then graduated from the Pontifical Catholic Biblical Institute of Rome. In 1988, he studied Biblical Geography and Archeology in Jerusalem.

He was vice-president of the Pontifical Faculty of Theology of the Carmelite Fathers in Rome between 2006 and 2009, when Pope Benedict XVI appointed him bishop Auxiliary of Managua.

"When I arrived, nobody knew me and I had to make a presentation, now I know all of Nicaragua," he said before leaving.

His brother states that unlike the other bishops, "Báez did not receive any salary in Nicaragua, he was living from what they had given him in Mbad, from what his parents and people had given him."