Ortega Regime Continues to Detain Priests in Northern Nicaragua

With the abduction of Matagalpa priest Father Denis Martinez Garcia on Sunday, August 11, the Daniel Ortega-Rosario Murillo regime continued its spree of abductions of Catholic priests in northern Nicaragua. 

The abduction of Father Martinez Garcia, who served as an educator at the interdiocesan seminary Our Lady of Fatima in Managua, took place during the early hours of Sunday, August 11, when the priest was on his way to celebrate mass in the city of Matagalpa, according to the lawyer Martha Patricia Molina, who has been investigating the persecution of the Church in Nicaragua.

The arrest of Father Martinez Garcia comes one day after the dictatorship abducted Father Leonel Balmaceda, from the Jesús de Caridad parish in the La Trinidad municipality of Esteli, and Carmen Saenz, a lay worker with the Matagalpa diocese.

Fathers Martinez Garcia and Balmaceda belong to the dioceses of Matagalpa and Esteli, under the care of Bishop Rolando Alvarez who was banished to the Vatican in January after more than a year as a political prisoner of the dictatorship.

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Priests arrested and banished

On August 8, the dictatorship expelled and banished to the Vatican seven of the eight Catholic priests it had recently detained at the Our Lady of Fatima Seminary in Managua. Only Father Frutos Valle, the 79-year old ad omnia administrator of the Esteli diocese who had been arrested on July 26, remained in custody.

The seven priests who were banished on August 8 are Edgar Sacasa, Ulises Vega, Marlon Velazquez, Víctor Godoy, Harvin Torres, Jairo Pravia and Silvio Romero. They had all been abducted by the dictatorship in the first five days of August. The recent expulsions bring to 46 the number of priests who have been banished by the regime. Since 2018, the dictatorship has subjected more than 200 religious men and women to banishment, expulsion, or refusal of re-entry to Nicaragua.

This article was published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by our staff. To get the most relevant news from our English coverage delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe to The Dispatch.