Nicaragua’s Sandinista Government has expelled the president of the country’s bishops conference, Bishop Carlos Enrique Herrera of Jinotega. Source: The Tablet.
The 75-year-old bishop was put on a flight to Guatemala on November 12 after denouncing the local mayor in his north-western diocese for setting up loudspeakers to play loud music outside the Cathedral of St John the Baptist during a Mass on November 10.
Mayor Leónidas Centeno’s action was “sacrilegious”, Bishop Herrera said.
“Let us ask the Lord to forgive our failings and also to forgive those who do not respect our worship, because what the mayor and all the municipal authorities are doing is sacrilegious,” Bishop Herrera said.
“Tell them that, because they know what time Mass is celebrated.”
Mr Centeno, an important figuring in Daniel Ortega’s regime, led the repression of regional protests against the government in 2018 in which four protesters died.
His measures resulted in the arrest and subsequent deportation of Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa. Bishop Herrera is the third bishop to be expelled by the regime this year, after Bishop Álvarez and Bishop Isidoro Mora of Siuna.
The Latin American bishops’ council CELAM condemned Bishop Herrera’s expulsion in a letter addressed to the Archbishop of Managua, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes.
“We are following with sorrow the events that are afflicting the pilgrim Church in Nicaragua, and are distressed once more at the expulsion of [Bishop] Carlos Enrique Herrera,” it said. “We stand in solidarity with him and pray that this situation may be resolved soon so that he can return to his country.”
The CELAM letter ended by expressing solidarity with “the bishops and the faithful holy people of God in Nicaragua, whose strong faith is a witness of faithfulness to the Lord that shines out across the whole continent.”
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Nicaraguan regime expels bishops’ conference president (By Francis McDonagh, The Tablet)
