The Nicaraguan government has expelled Bishop Carlos Herrera, president of the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference (CEN), to Guatemala, the latest measure targeting the Church which it accuses of treason, corroborating sources indicated on Thursday, November 14.
Mgr Herrera, from the diocese of Jinotega (north) and president of the CEN since 2021, is the third bishop expelled by the Nicaraguan regime after Rolando Alvarez and Isidoro Mora, once imprisoned before being expelled to Rome.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his vice-president wife Rosario Murillo accuse the Catholic Church of having supported the 2018 protests which demanded their departure, and left more than 300 dead according to the UN. They consider them a coup attempt orchestrated by the United States.
Nicaragua has since strengthened its legal arsenal and suspended the authorization to operate of more than 3,000 NGOs.
An expulsion to Guatemala
Mgr Herrera “was deported to Guatemala”said a member of the Nicaraguan Catholic Church in exile.
Il “entered the country today” Thursday, confirmed the Guatemalan government, emphasizing that it was not under the status of “asylum seeker”.
More than 50 religious – including 43 Catholic priests – were expelled and around 200 prevented from entering the country, the NGO denounced at the end of October «Nicaragua Never Again Collective»who operates in exile from Costa Rica.
At the end of September, during the United Nations General Assembly, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, called on the Ortega government to respect the “freedom of religion”.
The Church victim of “persecution” in Nicaragua
“We call on the international community and human rights organizations to denounce this outrage and demand respect for the faith and its representatives in the country”the Nicaraguan Freedom Foundation said in a statement on Thursday.
“The arbitrary banishment of Bishop Herrera continues to show the persecution of which the Catholic Church is victim at the hands of the dictatorship”wrote the Nicaraguan University Alliance.
According to Félix Maradiaga, a former presidential candidate now exiled in the United States, “this is a new attack on religious freedom and human dignity in Nicaragua”.
Since February 2023, some 450 politicians, businessmen, journalists, intellectuals, human rights activists and clerics have been expelled from Nicaragua and stripped of their nationality for ” treason “.
