By Gabriella Ceraso<\/p>\n\n
With words full of pain, Pope Francis spoke out at Sunday\u2019s Angelus about the events of recent weeks in Nicaragua, where the Church, its priests and bishops, the media, and NGOs have been caught up in a series of harassing and persecutory actions because they are suspected of supporting the opponents of Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government:<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI am following closely, with concern and sorrow, the situation in Nicaragua, which involves both people and institutions,\u201d the Pope declared, adding, \u201cI would like to express my conviction and my hope that, through open and sincere dialogue, the basis for a respectful and peaceful coexistence can still be found.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The Pope then invoked the intercession of Mary Immaculate, the \u201cPur\u00edsima\u201d so dear to the people of Nicaragua: \u201cLet us ask the Lord, through the intercession of the Most Pure, to inspire such a concrete will in the hearts of all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The suffering of the Church of Nicaragua<\/strong><\/p>\n\n Dialogue, a call to respect, and prayer: This is the appeal of Pope Francis, as he joins his voice to that of international institutions and the Churches of America and Europe concerned about what is happening, following the closure of a series of Catholic broadcasting stations, the halting of the work of NGOs, the expulsion from the country of the Congregation of the Sisters of Mother Teresa, and the suspension of ecclesiastical activities, the arrest of priests, and most recently \u2013 last Friday night \u2013 the forced removal, turned into house arrest, of the bishop of the diocese of Matagalpa, Bishop Rolando \u00c1lvarez. The Bishop, together with several priests and lay people, had been confined under surveillance in the diocesan curia since the beginning of August.<\/p>\n\n Police claim the Bishop had tried to organize violent groups and incited acts of hatred to destabilize the government. Bishop \u00c1lvarez had also initially tried to pray in the street, carrying the Eucharist in a monstrance, but was stopped by police officers. \u201cWe want to do God’s will, we are in his hands,\u201d wrote the 55-year-old prelate in a tweet while he was still in Matagalpa. Today his health has deteriorated, although his morale remains strong. In Managua, he was able to see his family and meet the vice-president of the bishops’ conference, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes, who had a long talk with him.<\/p>\n\n The appeals of the international community<\/strong><\/p>\n\n The conditions of the bishop of Matagalpa, the imprisonment of the priests and lay people who were with him, and the social tension in the country, have also drawn the concern of the international community. The United Nations has raised concerns of a serious \u201cobstruction of democratic and civil life\u201d in Nicaragua, while the Organisation of American States (OAS) and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) have warned of \u201cpersecution\u201d and \u201ccriminalization.\u201d They all call on the Ortega government to protect universal human rights and to return freedom to those arbitrarily detained.<\/p>\n\n In numerous messages that are arriving from the bishops’ conferences throughout the world, there is also the invitation \u2013 reiterated today by Francis \u2013 to pray and to be actively close to the Central American country, and to recognize the underlying witness of faith and community that it is offering at a time of trial. Most recently, the Cuban bishops, along with the Panamanian and Venezuelan bishops’ conferences have raised their voices in the same sense.<\/p>\n\n Bishop \u00c1lvarez has himself expressed confidence in the prayers of all in the face of this difficult situation. \u201cAware that prayer is the Christian’s strength,\u201d he said, according to local media reports, \u201cthe invitation is to continue to implore Christ to intercede and watch over this small flock of His.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Gabriella Ceraso With words full of pain, Pope Francis spoke out at Sunday\u2019s Angelus about the events of recent…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nouvelle"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diocesemontreal.wp.vortexdev.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diocesemontreal.wp.vortexdev.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diocesemontreal.wp.vortexdev.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diocesemontreal.wp.vortexdev.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diocesemontreal.wp.vortexdev.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diocesemontreal.wp.vortexdev.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diocesemontreal.wp.vortexdev.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diocesemontreal.wp.vortexdev.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diocesemontreal.wp.vortexdev.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diocesemontreal.wp.vortexdev.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}