Vatican City
Reuters
Pope Francis on Monday denounced a growing crackdown on the Catholic Church in Nicaragua by the government of President Daniel Ortega.
Twelve priests and a bishop have been detained in recent days in the Central American country, where Ortega began repressing the Catholic Church after national demonstrations in 2018.
Pope Francis leads the Angelus prayer at the Vatican, on 1st January, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Remo Casilli
“I am following with concern what is happening in Nicaragua, where bishops and priests have been deprived of their freedom,” Francis said in his weekly Sunday message and blessing in St Peter’s Square.
“I express my closeness in prayer to them, their families and the entire church in Nicaragua…I hope the path of dialogue can be followed to overcome difficulties.”
Since the 2018 protests, Ortega has accused priests of organising themselves and orchestrating a coup. The bishops had asked the President for justice for those who died during the protests, and early elections.
In 2023, after the government closed a Jesuit-run university in Managua, the worldwide leader of the religious order accused Ortega of attempting to “suffocate” the Catholic Church and civic institutions.
Last February, Bishop Rolando Alvarez, an Ortega critic, was convicted of treason, stripped of his citizenship and sentenced to 26 years in prison without a trial.
The Vatican embassy in Nicaragua was ordered closed in last March. The Vatican nuncio, or ambassador, was effectively expelled in 2022.
Vatican officials have told Reuters privately that they see the conflict in Nicaragua as one of the worst since the Cold War, when many communist countries in Eastern Europe persecuted the Catholic Church.
Ortega’s administration has been increasingly isolated internationally since he began cracking down heavily on dissent following street protests in 2018.
Meanwhile, Pope Francis also denounced violence against women on Monday, speaking as Italy is in the midst of national soul-searching about how to shed an entrenched culture of male chauvinism that often has led to femicide.
Francis has made numerous appeals for an end to violence against women in the past. But his words on Monday were the first in a speech since Italy was angered by the brutal killing of 22-year-old university student Giulia Cecchettin in November.
The killing sparked protests around the country and led to calls that teaching respect for girls become part of school programmes beginning at kindergarten level.
“Every society needs to accept the gift that is woman, every woman: to respect, defend and esteem women, in the knowledge that whosoever harms a single woman profanes God, who was born of a woman,” he said.
Italian lawmakers unanimously backed a raft of measures to clamp down on violence against women after the killing reopened a national debate on the subject.
Her ex-boyfriend has confessed to the killing, his lawyer has told reporters.
According to Italy’s interior ministry, more than 100 women were killed in 2023, about half of them by their partner or former partner. Femicide has become a common word in newspaper headlines.
Pope Francis attends a Mass to mark the World Day of Peace in St Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, on 1st January, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Remo Casilli
The outrage over Cecchettin’s killing coincided with the box office success of a film titled C’e Ancora Domani (There’s Still Tomorrow), which tells the story of a woman beaten by her husband.
Set in Rome just after World War II, when women won the right to vote, the film is now being used as a teaching tool in schools throughout the country.
The Pope made his comments in a homily of a Mass in St Peter’s Basilica on the day the Roman Catholic Church marks the Solemnity of Mary Most Holy Mother of God, which is also the Church’s World Day of Peace.
Francis said women had a crucial role in being models for peace.
“The world, too, needs to look to mothers and to women in order to find peace, to emerge from the spiral of violence and hatred, and once more see things with genuinely human eyes and hearts,” he said.
