Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Managua (Agenzia Fides) - "They can desecrate our temples, destroy our images, but our faith always remains in Jesus Christ who created heaven and earth. Long live the Sacramental Jesus". This is a new sacrilegious act reported a few days ago against the chapel of Nuestra Señora de Fatima in Campuzano, in the municipality of Nindirí, department of Masaya. "A group of unknown persons desecrated the Blessed Sacrament, the consecrated hosts were removed from the tabernacle and abandoned in a nearby property," said Jesús Silva, parish priest of Santa Ana de Nindirí parish, to which the chapel belongs.
In the recent report by Nicaraguan lawyer Martha Patricia Molina, 'Nicaragua: ¿Una Iglesia perseguida?' (a persecuted church?), 529 attacks against the Catholic Church have been reported since 2018, when protests against the dictatorial Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo broke out. Since the beginning of 2023, 90 have already been registered. In 2020, another chapel in the same municipality was also desecrated, where criminals stole money.
Five years of hostility, persecution, siege, desecration, destruction, theft, expulsion and confiscation perpetrated by the dictatorship, as well as the imprisonment of religious leaders and committed lay people of the Church in Nicaragua, this is what Molina denounced.
The report says that in 2018 the Catholic Church in Nicaragua suffered 84 attacks, 80 in 2019, 59 in 2020, 55 in 2021 and 161 in 2022, the highest number recorded in the last five years. (AP) (Agenzia Fides, 26/5/2023)
