Daniel Ortega’s loves and hates with the Catholic Church according to his convenience

Daniel Ortegathe dictator who rules with an iron fist Nicaragua, used religion as a costume to “take off and put on” as it suited him. One day we see him contrite hearing mass or receiving communion and the other attacking”mafiato the Church, to its bishops and even to the Pope. One day, he enthusiastically welcomes his mother Teresa of Calcutta to install his order in Nicaragua and years later he violently expelled his missionaries from the country.

Ortega is now leading a fierce persecution against the Catholic Church. director Roland Alvarez, Bishop of Matagalpa, is imprisoned in solitary confinement, accused of being a traitor to the homeland and of spreading false news. Two other priests are detained on charges of common law offenses and 12 other religious have been exiled from the country by order of the regime.

An investigation by lawyer Martha Patricia Molina Montenegro found that between April 2018 and October 2022, the Nicaraguan regime carried out 396 attacks against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, ranging from offensive paintings in churches to physical attacks, exiles and arrests. .

This Tuesday, during an act commemorating the 89th anniversary of the death of a national hero Augusto C. SandinoOrtega’s speech was particularly virulent against the Catholic Church, its bishops, the Vatican and the dad Francisco, whom he accuses of being “a mafia”.

In his traditional journey through history, Ortega pointed out that the Catholic Church was an “accomplice in these crimes” during the colonization of America, just as it was an ally of fascism and Nazism during World War II. world, and that many bishops he met sympathized with the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, overthrown in July 1979.

“What respect can I have for the bishops I met here in Nicaragua, if they were Somocists!” Ortega said. “I was a child when Somoza’s funeral took place, I was with my father, I was with my brothers, with my mother, watching the funeral go by, and there were the bishops burying Somoza as the prince of that is to say, as if he were a cardinal of the Church, simply because Somoza was a henchman who gave all the facilities to the Church, and he was a servant, an agent , an instrument of Yankee imperialism”.

Behind these attacks, however, hides a man who, as a teenager, wanted to be priestwho at the time asked forgiveness from the Catholic Church for the persecutions it had exercised against her in the 1980s, and who renewed her marriage vows with Rosario Murillo indulge in Catholic precepts.

altar boy

At the age of 16, Daniel Ortega went to El Salvador to enter the Salesian College of Santa Tecla, where he officiated as choir boy and expressed his intention to be a priest, according to the biographical book of Nicaraguan journalist Fabián Medina, “The Prisoner 198″.

Although he later abandoned his priestly intentions, the attitude of today’s Nicaraguan dictator can be explained by a “sui generis” religiosity, says Medina, who lived in the Ortega Saavedra family.

“All the Ortega Saavedra brothers have been baptized and confirmed in the Catholic faith. Daniel and Humberto first studied in Calasanz, when the family lived in Colonia Somoza. Daniel studied in the paid modality and Humberto in the annex, intended for those who could not afford tuition. When Mr. Daniel began to do better in the import business, the family moved to Roosevelt Avenue, opposite the chapel of the La Salle Pedagogical College, and the three boys, Daniel, Humberto and Camilo, moved to enrolled at the La Salle Pedagogical College and Germania at the Colegio La Inmaculada. Always in Catholic schools,” the book says.

request forgiveness

During the 1980s, the Catholic Church in Nicaragua was divided between supporters of the “liberation theologywhich supported the Sandinista revolution, and the traditional Catholic Church, which was persecuted. Assaults, teasing and expulsions. even the dad John Paul IIwas scorned and interrupted by a crowd of Sandinista sympathizers during his visit to Nicaragua in March 1983.

On Sunday July 4, 2006, on the eve of the elections, Daniel Ortega apologized for the humiliation he inflicted on the Catholic Church, especially that against Monsignor Madrigal by Bismarck Carballowho was taken away and exposed naked in front of TV cameras by security guards in the 1980s.

“We apologized for these mistakes, and now before this predominantly Catholic people, convinced that reconciliation is the right path, we humbly ask Bishop Carballo to forgive us,” Ortega said plaintively.

In this reconversion, Ortega made his sworn enemy, Cardinal miguel obando, an ally for your cause. After a surprise visit from the Sandinista leader, Obando appeared with Ortega in his main events, endorsing the actions of the regime with his presence.

It was Obando, who renewed the wedding vows of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in a controversial ceremony, with which he intended to skip a stumbling block that Obando himself had placed in his aspirations presidential.

electoral marriage

Daniel Ortega ran in the 2006 elections after three consecutive defeats. In the last two, Obando’s sermons were decisive in scaring off the vote from the Sandinista box. In 1996, Obando recounted the “parable of the viper, according to which a good Samaritan welcomes a snake that froze to death on the road. As soon as the viper warms up, it sinks its fangs into its savior and kills him. The message was a dart to the sweetness shown by Ortega.

For the 2001 elections, Obando did not speak about the viper but spoke about the family and the morals of the candidates. “As we vote, we have to ask ourselves,” he said, “does the candidate give strong and clear support for marriage and the marriage-based family, against the tide of equating real marriage to other types of unions? The state is worth what the families that make it up are worth. Another dart against Ortega, who had lived in a common-law union with Murillo since 1978.

To avoid the pitfall, Ortega and Murillo appeared on the afternoon of Saturday September 3, 2005, renewing their Matrimonial vowsarguing that they had been married “by the church” since 1978 in a clandestine ceremony that a deceased guerrilla priest performed in the mountains.

In another nod to the Catholic Church, Ortega supported with Sandinista votes in the National Assembly the total ban of the so-called “therapeutic abortionin October 2006.

In August 1988, when Ortega was president of Nicaragua, the religious order was founded in the country Association of Missionaries of Charity, after a visit to Nicaragua by Mother Teresa of Calcutta. In June 2022, Ortega himself canceled the charity and expelled the missionaries from the country, amid an offensive against non-governmental organizations and against the Catholic Church.

“Good” dad and “bad” dad

“I was raised Catholic, I was baptized, I made first communion, I was confirmed, but I never had any affection or respect for most priests and priests. religious, with exceptions, there are always exceptions,” Ortega said Tuesday.

“Let us remember that Cristo He never dressed like the bishops, even with caps and all the fancy costumes. Even less that he dresses as he dresses Dad, still less that he lived in palaces like those where the pope lives, or in palaces where cardinals live. Christ was born poor, he lived poor, he was an example of humility, and that’s why they murdered him,” he said.

Ortega’s attacks on the Vatican are his response to the “concern” and “sadness” expressed by the dad francisco on Sunday February 12, “because of the situation in Nicaragua”, in particular Bishop Rolando Álvarez, sentenced by the Ortega regime to 26 years in prison.

Previously, the treatment of the Nicaraguan regime was different, even for some exaggeratedly soft, in line with this “take off and put on” behavior that Ortega used, as evidenced by these birthday wishes to Pope Francis sent on December 17, 2020.

“You deserve all the glory, simple and joyful, of the peoples of the world. Glory, as a son of God. Glory, as a Christian missionary, truly committed to love, which is justice, right and solidarity. Glory, as an exalted pacifist who cries out every day for harmony in this world and among all beings,” reads part of the letter signed by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.

“You have to understand everything upside down for the Ortega Murillos,” explains lawyer Martha Patricia Molina, who specializes in religious investigations. “When they speak of love, it is because they speak of hate, and if they speak of peace, prepare to see blood. Their speeches of love and reconciliation in the Vatican is to show that they are good Christians but what they say on paper is useless as they immediately start shouting and using foul and foul language against those who represent the Catholic Church and its highest representative, Pope Francis.

Continue reading: