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In Nicaragua, the archbishop of the capital Managua and Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes, the apostolic nuncio Stanislaw Waldemar Sommertag (representative of Pope Francis in the Central American country), the auxiliary bishop of Managua Monsignor Silvio Báez and Bishop Miguel Mantica were attacked by Sandinista police and paramilitaries in the San Sebastian Basilica of Diriamba, a town 40 kilometers from the capital, where they had gone to liberate a group of Franciscan nurses and missionaries besieged, directly in the cathedral, by paramilitaries linked to the Marxist government of Daniel Ortega .
This act was interpreted as the total breakdown of the dictator Ortega with the Catholic Church of Pope Francis with whom he maintained a tense but narrow relationship.
The prelates, accompanied by the Nicaraguan Association of Human Rights, after reaching the square where the basilica is located, saw the temple surrounded by about 200 hooded policemen, as well as dozens of armed paramilitaries, even heavily, with their faces covered.
"We have felt this action, hard, strong and brutal against our priests, we have never seen anything like it in Nicaragua and it is really sad," said Cardinal Brenes after the events and after presiding over a prayer in the Metropolitan Cathedral.
The only similar incident was the Sandinista affront to San John Paul II which took place in March 1983. Then the Sandinists interrupted, on a public square, the mbad of the pontiff shouting "we want peace."
"We went to parishes not to do violence, but to comfort our priests, to accompany them in suffering, but we received this aggression and we all suffered for Christ, "added the paramilitaries Brenes – armed with rifles – and the Sandinista crowd besieged the basilica and inside the priests and volunteer doctors who were, in essence, kidnapped and then wounded because of the repression, some journalists were attacked by the prelates and they were also destroyed
The Twitter Monseigneur Silvio Báez, to whom the episcopal insignia were torn off, wrote that "with violence we are walking on a dead end road, problems are solved with reason and dialogue ". The prelate was wounded in the right arm, beaten in the stomach and verbally badaulted, while Bishop Miguel Mantica suffered a neck injury
. The bishops' presence at Diriamba, to mediate between the parties, had been widely announced, as they had done. June 21, with success in the city of Masaya. But while the paramilitaries and the crowd at Masaya have remained silent, something has changed now
The Sandinista-Marxist president, Ortega, had indirectly threatened the bishops last Saturday, when he had radicalized his stance against the crisis : the president in fact, he did not propose the election for the first quarter of 2019, at the request of a large part of the population, showing that he was attached to power . He has led the country since 2006, after changing the constitution to abolish the two-term limit.
According to the Agenzia Fides Ortega reportedly ordered to put an end to the protests before July 19, the 39th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution. For its part, the Episcopal Conference of the country issued a brief statement in which "repudiates and deeply deplores the physical and verbal aggression" suffered by the bishops.
The delegation, explains the note, "has fulfilled the mission of Jesus Christ, being with those who suffer". It was "a pastoral visit to the priests and faithful of the Carazo region, victims of the police, paramilitaries and crowds who produce death and pain".
The aggression against the nuncio and bishops of Managua provoked the condemnation and solidarity of several episcopal conferences around the world. That of Costa Rica, led by Monsignor Jose Rafael Quirós Quirós (Archbishop of San José) in a statement called "basic" aggression and denouncing "the constant worsening of the Nicaraguan government's crackdown on its own people ".
The bishops of Costa Rica ask "the international community to collaborate for the solution of this problem and to bring peace".
Monsignor José María Gil Tamayo, Secretary General of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, Twitter expressed his "solidarity with the Nicaraguan Bishops brutally attacked for defending the people" and publicly denounced the outrage and prayed "for this sister nation".
The Archdiocese of Monterrey (Mexico), expressed its closeness to the "brothers" in Nicaragua and solidarity with Bishop Silvio José Baez after the attack that he received "The Archbishop of Madrid (Spain), Cardinal Carlos Osoro, wrote to pray" for the bishops and the people of Nicaragua, so that the Lord can support you, with the strength of his grace and his love , to remain brave witnesses of he was in the middle of the violence. "
In addition to the aggression against the bishops, a Catholic church in the city of Jinotepe was desecrated by another group of paramilitaries.As a result of these acts of violence, the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference, mediator and witness of the national dialogue, suspended the working tables created to overcome the crisis that the country is going through.
The conflict in Nicaragua began in April protests against the reform of the law on social security that the government wanted to impose. Although Ortega finally withdrew the reform, retaliation from regime-related groups provoked hundreds of deaths that outraged the population, who responded with other demonstrations, which in turn More than 300 Nicaraguans were killed during these weeks of demonstrations.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the High Commissioner The United Nations Human Rights Commission accuses the Ortega government of serious human rights violations. "killings, extrajudicial executions, ill-treatment, torture and arbitrary detentions against the majority of the young population of the country".
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