Representatives of Nicaragua’s bishops and the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Fortunatus Nwachukwu, are to meet President Daniel Ortega tomorrow to try to defuse years of tension between the head of state and the Church.
In advance of the meeting at the headquarters of the Apostolic Nunciature in Nicaragua, the bishops’ conference asked the faithful for three days of prayer as preparation and guidance.
Mr Ortega first came to power as the head of the Marxist Sandinista National Liberation Front, ruling from 1979 until 1990. He subsequently won further elections in 2006 and 2011.
Last November, the bishops warned that Nicaragua was in danger of slipping again into dictatorship. In response to government plans to allow unlimited presidential terms, the episcopal conference warned of “the continuation of an absolute long-term power exercised by a person or by a party, in a dynastic manner or through political and economic oligarchy”. The bishops quoted St John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus: “as history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism”.
The Church has been active in support of civil rights in Nicaragua, which has put it in direct opposition to the Government. “One cannot talk openly and honestly without being subject to persecution by the authorities,” Bishop Juan Abelardo Mata Guevara, President of the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights said last year.
Above: President Ortega and Cardinal Miguel Obando Bravo of Managua, Nicaragua, pictured together after a meeting in 2009. Photo: CNS/Nicolas Garcia, Reuters
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