There is not the slightest doubt that the Central American Catholic Church has lived through dark times as in the entire continent, they went from having all the power of the State during the colony to being confined in the churches during the liberal revolutions of the mid and late nineteenth century.
Julio Abdel Aziz Valdez
They supported insurgent movements between the seventies and eighties, they involved thousands and many of them died not to make the region a better place to live but to keep the new Catholic church alive, this did not stop the advance of the religious change that was coming and which we will talk about another time.
– Advertisement –
In short, today we are witnesses like the dictatorship, the real Central American dictatorship, that of Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo together with the party of the revolution, the Sandinista National Liberation Front, that’s right, the same structure that intended to a socialist paradise in the region and for this he used Soviet weapons and Cuban assistance, he expelled millions of his compatriots to Costa Rica and the United States, but that is ancient history, but that the current government in its eagerness to impose homogeneity of thought does not it only closes newspapers, cancels NGOs but has imprisoned priests and ecclesial authorities, the latter deserves special attention.
Without the participation of this same Catholic Church, which today is being persecuted, the Sandinista revolution that triumphed after the resignation of Anastasio Somoza in 1979, certainly after they imposed themselves on the provisional government junta, what’s more, in In later years, the alliance with this same church made it possible to close the advance of the evangelical churches in the entire region. It is not an exaggeration to say that Nicaragua was the most Catholic country in the entire region. This difference made the Sandinista experience different from the Stalinist socialism of the Cubans who repressed the same church after the triumph of their revolution in 1959, twenty years earlier.
Such acts of institutional violence that differ from those that occurred in the decades of armed conflict, where religious armed themselves to impose their cristero vision of the socialist revolution and liberation theology (forgive the redundancy) today and especially in Nicaragua, the Levels of social tension decreased once the demonstrations produced when the FSLN prepared for re-election were put down with bullets and thus confirmed their dictatorial intentions. The divorce between Sandinismo and the church occurs once they realize that the latter responds to their own interests and forms an alliance when conditions so demand, hence they were ordered to make their own version of Christianity, sanctifying the heroes of Sandinismo and with the new age spirituality of Doña Rosario.
Silence prevails in the Vatican with a Jesuit Pope, as in the Catholic churches throughout the region, where Liberation Theology has become Perversion Theology since it manages abortionist feminist movements, decolonial ethnicisms that insult the contribution of the Christianity in the current cultural identity promotes maligned political leadership of the left, not to mention the usurpation of private property. The raging priests and nuns who once said they represented poor people continue to see Nicaragua as the epitome of equality they hope to one day attain, hence the issue of imprisonment and destruction of churches, as has happened in Argentina and Mexico with the feminists, it doesn’t matter.
When we see Bishop Rolando Álvarez kneeling in the street with the Sandinista police behind him, what we see is the death of liberation theology as a concept, there cannot be any consideration and justification for those who, with the force of the State, try to limit the free expression of spirituality, but since the theology of liberation was constituted as the counterpart of the “right” governments, apparently when it comes to contravening those of the left, they are left without arguments, for those who actually use violence today and the they justify not from legality but from the morality conferred by being on the left, morality sanctified with holy water.
Masses in the street in Nicaragua, the extreme unction to Liberation Theology | PERSPECTIVE