Daniel Ortega, there is a name that brings 80 flashbacks. The leader of the Sandinistas, always a favorite cause of the Catholic Left, has been President of Nicaragua since 2007 and has transformed that impoverished nation into a brutal dictatorship at war with its own people and the Catholic Church:
The government “has declared war on the church,” said Juan Sebastián Chamorro, a member of the opposition alliance.
While the church tried to strike the delicate balance between mediator and defender, it was Monsignor Báez who emerged as the face of the opposition, with a commanding presence over social media. The role gives him the freedom to denounce the government without reservations.
“What there is here is an armed state against an unarmed people,” he said in an interview at the seminary where he lives on the outskirts of Managua. “This is not a civil war.”…
Protesters die daily, and many more have been injured and arrested as the resistance hardens against the rule of Mr. Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo. Most of the dead were civilians, some teenagers — but police officers have also been killed.
In addition to the protesters who have been murdered in the streets, many more have been injured and there are reports of severe torture. Sunday NBC News reported the story of Marco Novoa, a 25-year-old university student who spent a week being tortured in May:
“They hit me with the gun and they said, ‘No we’re not going to kill you yet,’” he recalled.
Novoa said the men wanted to know where the money was coming from to support the protests. They asked him if it was from the U.S. Embassy and seemed to know he was a U.S. citizen by birth. He told them the support for the protesters came from the community.
With the passing days the questions remained the same but the tactics changed, he said. In his cell, which had no toilet, he was forced to defecate on the floor. He said he could hear other people in cells nearby but couldn’t speak to them. Still tied up, he tried to find a position that would bring sleep.
When he did drift off, he said cold water was dumped on him, then he was shocked with electricity. “They tased my body and they tased my genitals,” he said. After that came Russian roulette with a pistol, Novoa said.
He said he lost track of time as the torture went on, but some things he cannot erase from his mind: The way he could not breathe when waterboarded him. And the day one man sodomized him with an object, telling him, “I’m going to give you something so you remember this the rest of your life if you get out of here.”
Novoa was released but only after he agreed to make a staged confession in which he admitted to being part of a “rebel group that planned to kill a monsignor, destroy government buildings and kidnap members of the ruling party and their families.” His statement was pre-written by his captors and recorded. Once he was well enough to travel, he fled with his family to Miami.
Go here to read the rest. More about the war of Ortega against the Church:
As attacks on Catholic clergy continued and anti-government protesters were besieged by Nicaraguan police and paramilitaries, the country’s bishops said they would pray an exorcism prayer.
The bishops said July 20 would be a day of prayer and fasting “as an act of atonement for the profanation carried out in recent months against God.” On that day, “We will pray the prayer of exorcism to St. Michael Archangel.”
On July 15, the vehicle of Bishop Juan Mata Guevara of Esteli was shot as he traveled to the city of Nindiri, where he had hoped to stop an attack by police and paramilitaries. The bishop escaped unharmed, but the vehicle’s tires were shot out and windows broken, said Father Victor Rivas, executive secretary of the Nicaraguan bishops’ conference.
An attack July 14 at the nearby National Autonomous University of Nicaragua campus in Managua left two students dead and injured 15 more. Some of the fleeing protesters sought shelter in Divine Mercy Church, where the injured were being treated, but armed assailants stopped ambulances from reaching the church.
A Washington Post reporter was among those trapped in the parish, which churchmen said had been “profaned,” and pictures posted to social media showed the church had been pockmarked by bullets.
“They are shooting at a church,” Father Erick Alvarado Cole, a pastor at the parish, told The Washington Post. “The government says it respects human rights. Is this respecting human rights?”
On July 9, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes Solorzano of Managua, Bishop Baez and Archbishop Sommertag were among clergy from Managua pummeled as they attempted to protect St. Sebastian Basilica in the city of Diriamba from an incursion by a pro-government mob. Bishop Baez and at least one other priest were injured. Journalists also were attacked and had cameras and other equipment stolen.
Go here to read the rest. It is easy when considering the Catholic Church in times of peace to become cynical about our clergy and laity, and their manifold failings. However it is good to remember how heroic Catholic clergy and laity can be in times of violent persecution which is precisely what is occurring now in Nicaragua. The Trump administration has condemned Ortega’s squalid war against the Church. Bolivian President Evo Morales, the fellow who gave Pope Francis the Commie Crucifix, claims that the uprising of the Nicaraguan people is all a US plot. Go here to read his rantings. To his credit, Pope Francis has stood behind the Nicaraguan Bishops. On July 20 the Bishops of Nicaragua led their nation in saying the Saint Michael Prayer:
Saint Michael, the Archangel, defend us in the battle. Be our protection against the malice and snares of the Devil. We humbly beseech God to command him. And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the powers of God, cast into Hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
May Saint Michael come to the aid of the people of Nicaragua.
Another leftist sh__hole. His wife is the V.P.? Churches shot up, people tortured? This is a bad B-movie plot. Too bad Ortega is a communist, because if he was from anywhere to the right of the political spectrum, the MSM would be demanding action from the Trump administration. As it stands, he’s just another example of the Democrats’ bad judgment and we don’t need to be reminded of that. I mean, kids in school ought to be studying about this situation, right after they finish the chapter on another leftist inspired sh__hole, Venezuela.
The Sandinistas have managed to stay in power through massive electoral fraud. The Obama administration did nothing, of course. Again, if you want to understand Obama, read back issues of The Nation published ca. 1983. At this juncture, Daniel Ortega’s brother has abandoned him.
President and his wife the VP? Sounds like the Obama administration all over.
Ortega was always a POS. My wife’s best friend and her husband resided in Managua. They own a hardware store. The family left for Colombia.
Ortega, Raul Castro, Maduro and that pipsqueak in Bolivia all deserve the same fate. In retrospect, it’s easy to be harsh on the Bush presidencies. One of the things the first Bush got right was sacking Noriega in Panama. Today, Panama is a peaceful and safe place to visit and live.
The MSM is reporting nothing of this. It was one reason I enlisted back in the day. What is going on now is absolute proof that President Reagan was right about the Sandinistas. We need new Contras.
Ortega, Raul Castro, Maduro and that pipsqueak in Bolivia all deserve the same fate.
The pipsqueak in Bolivia came out of the business community. His counterpart in Ecuador is an economist. That inhibited them from doing the sort of rapaciously stupid things which have been done in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The Bolivian and Ecuadorean economies have been in satisfactory shape the last dozen years. Neither Mr. Morales nor Dr. Correa have been above obnoxious statements and abuse of power, but Bolivia and Ecuador retain competitive political orders. Morales lost a referendum to extend his tenure of office and will be departing nex year. Correa left office last year.
I read that abortion is illegal in Nicaragua, no exceptions. If this is true I find it ironic considering the type of politics that plays out there.
Nicaragua is a re-run of Mexico and its anti-Catholic governments of the 19th and first half of the 20th century.
The whole sorry history of our southern neighbor’s animus toward the Church should be taught to every student in Catholic elementary schools, high schools, and colleges.
Had Lt Col. Oliver North been allowed to continue to carry out the clandestine war in the White House basement during the Reagan years, things might never have come to this. Unfortunately, the “useful idiots” in the democrat party in congress saw to it that his efforts were shut down. We are our own worst enemy.
Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua: It dosent get much worse for the RCC than this.
No, wait, I forgot the pope’s upcoming deal with China. Can’t wait to see that monstrosity.
[…] Crux Nicaragua’s Ortega Denies Responsibility for Deaths; Open to Dialogue w/Church – Crx War on the Church in Nicaragua – Donald R. McClarey J.D., The American Catholic Note: A new post is published daily at 12:01 […]
ALPHATRON SHINYSKULLUS wrote:
“The MSM is reporting nothing of this.”
This with a carillon… 🙁
Maister McClarey,
Further to your now closed “The Problem With Scotland” from earlier this month, have you seen this story about another parade in my home town?
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/07/father-morris-wont-be-the-last-priest-to-leave-a-university-over-their-religious-beliefs/
Sub-Calvinist heid bangers to the right and left-liberal academics to the left… 🙁
No’ in the same league as what our brothers and sisters in hell holes like Nicaragua have to endure but it put me in mind o’ Cardinal George’s 2012 clash with the LGBTwhatever lobby in Ghicago and his now famous 2010 comments:
“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”
Viene la tormenta!
God forgive us all…
Had Lt Col. Oliver North been allowed to continue to carry out the clandestine war in the White House basement during the Reagan years, things might never have come to this.
Nicaragua had a competitive political order from 1990 to 2011. A Sandinista president was elected on a plurality vote in 2007 and set about guaranteeing he’d never be voted out of office like he had been in 1990. Ideally, this ends with the Sandinista front liquidated and the better elements within it erecting a successor organization shorn of the criminality.
“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”
He didn’t realize his successor would be Blaise Cupich. With scant doubt, most of our bishops are the sort readily suborned by governments like Nicaragua’s, the Bishop of Rome foremost among them.