No let up from Ortega during Holy Week: Priest expelled, traditions banned in Nicaragua

ACI Prensa Staff, Apr 5, 2023 / 15:20 pm

The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, hasn’t declared a truce in its persecution of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, not even during Holy Week.

Félix Maradiaga, a former political prisoner and also a former presidential candidate who was deported to the United States, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, that the dictatorship expelled Panamanian priest Father Donaciano Alarcón from the country on Monday of Holy Week.

“They took him over the Honduran border. His ‘crime’ was that at Mass he prayed for the release of Bishop [Rolando] Álvarez,” Maradiaga said.

Alarcón, who worked at Mary Help of Christians Parish in the town of San José de Cusmapa in the Diocese of Estelí, was arrested by the police after celebrating Mass.

Álvarez, the apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Estelí and the bishop of Matagalpa, was sentenced in February to 26 years and four months in prison, unjustly accused of treason.

Since there was no news of his whereabouts for 40 days after he was sentenced, the regime showed him at the end of March eating and talking with his siblings in the “La Modelo” prison in a staged scene that was described as “repugnant and cynical” by the auxiliary bishop of Managua, Silvio Báez, who lives in exile in the United States.

The Communications and Press Office of the Archdiocese of Panama reported that Father Alarcón “is well and safe after his expulsion from Nicaragua.”

The priest met in Honduras with Father Ismael Montero Toyos, superior of the Central American Claretians, who spoke about Alarcón’s situation “and the missionaries who are still in Nicaraguan territory, most of them foreigners.”

“We prefer that they be expelled than put in jail,” Montero said.

According to information from the Archdiocese of Panama, “Father Alarcón was accused of violating the decrees that prohibit public expressions [of faith] during Holy Week.”