The president of the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua, Monsignor Carlos Herrera, was expelled from Nicaraguan territory and sent to Guatemala, where it arrived this Thursdayas confirmed to Reuters the office of Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo, amid pressure against religious.
Monsignor Herrera, 75 years old, was received at the Provincial House of Franciscan Friarsan order to which the clergyman belongs, according to press publications in Nicaragua and sources close to the Catholic Church.
“Yes, he entered the country today, not as an asylum seeker”he told the news agency Reuters the Communication Secretariat of the Presidency in Guatemala, without giving more details about the conditions in which the bishop arrived in the country.
Earlier, the lawyer and human rights defender Martha Molina denounced that Herrera suffered “persecution by the dictatorship, through police commissioner Horacio Rocha”current presidential advisor on security affairs, and the Sandinista mayor of Jinotega, Leónidas Centeno.
The Daniel Ortega regime in Nicaragua has not confirmed the expulsion of Herrera.
The apparent reason for the exile, the lawyer explained, was because On Sunday the bishop complained about the scandal with loudspeakers made by people close to the Jinotega mayor’s office near the cathedral where he was officiating mass.
Manuel Salazar, head of the Diocese of Tilarán-Liberia, in northern Costa Rica, criticized the bishop’s expulsion with a Facebook message and said “May the Immaculate Conception crush the head of the old snake!”
With Herrera, who during the 2018 protests advocated for numerous young people arrested by the police in Jinotega and managed their freedom, they add three bishops expelled by the Sandinista regime since January.
In the same period, similar cases have also been reported against dozens of priests and nuns, as well as against evangelical pastors. President Daniel Ortega has accused the Catholic Church of supporting the opposition and has even called several of its bishops “demons.”
According to a report published two weeks ago by the NGO Colectivo Nicaragua Ahora Más, from Costa Rica, More than 50 religious were exiled by the Sandinista regime since 2018. At least 74 were detained and 35 of them were stripped of their nationality, he added.
Ortega, a 78-year-old former guerrilla who governed Nicaragua in the 1980s and has been in power since 2007, is accused by the United States, the European Union and Latin American countries of having established an autocracy in the country.
The UN Human Rights Council will present its report on Nicaragua this Friday in Geneva. United Nations experts accuse the Nicaraguan government of “crimes against humanity.”
(With information from AFP, EFE and Reuters)
