Il Messaggiere - Nicaragua's Ortega banishes leading Catholic bishop

Bishop Carlos Herrera is the third bishop to be expelled since January by the government of Ortega, once a guerrilla hero and now accused of being a leftist autocrat leading a harsh crackdown on political and other dissent.

Herrera "entered the country today," Guatemala's government confirmed in a brief message sent to AFP while stressing that the Catholic leader had not sought asylum in the Central American country.

Herrera, who has presided over the Bishops' Conference of Nicaragua since 2021, is bishop of the northern diocese of Jinotega.

In January, two other bishops, Rolando Alvarez and Isidora Mora, were expelled to the Vatican in Rome.

According to Nicaraguan journalists working in exile in Costa Rica and the United States, Herrera was "banished" for criticizing noises coming from the Jinotega mayor's office while celebrating mass next door in Jinotega's cathedral on November 10.

The Nicaraguan government has not commented on the reports.

Ortega, 78, and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, accuse the Catholic Church of having supported anti-government protests in 2018 that were harshly repressed.

The United Nations say more than 300 people were killed in protests which Ortega branded an attempted coup promoted by the United States and backed by the religious community.

Ortega's Sandinista rebels toppled a US-backed dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1979.

He led the country until 1990 and returned to power in 2007 with a more moderate programme.

But in recent years he has seized control of all branches of government and led a sweeping crackdown on groups including the Catholic Church and NGOs he sees as a threat to his rule.

The NGO Colectivo Nicaragua Nunca Mas, based in Costa Rica, said in a report last month that more than 50 religious people had been banned from Nicaragua since 2018.

A spokesman for the Jesuits in Central America, Jose Maria Tojeira, said Herrera's banishment was proof that "the repression against the Church in Nicaragua continues."

He added: "Never before in Central America has there been such religious language from tyrants and such systematic persecution of the Christian faith."

Felix Maradiaga, a former Nicaraguan presidential candidate who went into exile in the United States, called Herrera's banishment "another attack against religious freedom and human dignity in Nicaragua."

Some 450 politicians, businesspeople, journalists, intellectuals, human rights activists and religious figures have been expelled from Nicaragua and stripped of their nationality since February 2023, accused of treason.

The UN Human Rights Council will present its report on the country in Geneva on Friday.

I.Pesaro--IM