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The government of President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua on Wednesday revoked the legal personhood of the Society of Jesus and ordered the transfer of all its assets to the state.
Auxiliary Bishop Silvio Báez of Managua, Nicaragua, who is living in exile in the United States, responded to new verbal attacks by Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega saying they are signs of the weakness and desperation of the president of the Central American country.
Father Donaciano Alarcón, a Claretian missionary expelled from Nicaragua by the dictatorship, described how the authorities leveled unfounded accusations against him, took him to the border with Honduras, and abandoned him to his fate.
The Holy See reported on Saturday that the Vatican’s diplomatic headquarters in Nicaragua was forced to close.
The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, has ordered the closing of the Vatican embassy in Managua and the Nicaraguan embassy to the Holy See in Rome, according to Reuters.
Pope Francis called Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega “unstable” and likened Nicaragua’s Sandinista government to Nazi Germany in an interview published Friday.
“The news from Nicaragua has grieved me a great deal,” the pope said.
The Diocese of Matagalpa has asked the faithful to continue praying for its bishop, Rolando Álvarez, the priests, seminarians, and the layman who were arrested and abducted in the middle of the night by the police of the Nicaraguan dictatorship, led by President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.
The dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua has expelled the Religious Sisters of the Cross, thus continuing its attacks against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua.
Archbishop Waldemar Stanisław Sommertag who was expelled from Nicaragua amid harassment of Church personnel by the government of the Central American nation has been appointed the representative of the Holy Father in Senegal, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mauritania.
When then Pope John Paul II’s plane landed in Nicaragua on March 4, 1983, the authorities were waiting, including Daniel Ortega, who with his wife, Rosario Murillo, now lead the country’s current dictatorship.
The archbishop of Managua, Nicaragua, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes, met with the bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando Álvarez, hours after the bishop had been abducted by the Daniel Ortega dictatorship during the early hours of August 19.
The national police of Nicaragua's Ortega regime said that the bishop was seized to prevent "destabilizing and provocative activities.”
Bishop Eugenio Salazar Mora of Tilarán-Liberia in Costa Rica greeted the nuns one by one and knelt as he greeted their superior.
The action is the latest in religious persecutions that have escalated there in the last four years.