The Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua (CEN) expressed its concern for the thousands of people who are fleeing from the country due to the crisis as it is described as “a reflection of a human drama that challenges us.”
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) indicated that “the political instability that has prevailed in Nicaragua since April 2018 has forced around 200,000 people to flee persecution and human rights violations.”
“Most of these people (150,000) have gone to Costa Rica, a neighboring country. The number of Nicaraguans who have requested protection in Costa Rica since 2018 exceeds the number of people who fled the Central American civil wars in the 1980s,” the UN agency said on its website.
The CEN expressed that the joy that the time of preparation for Christmas brings does not prevent the bishops from “acknowledging the concerns we have about the social, political, and economic events of our homeland.”
“Above all, among others, the migratory crisis, which is a reflection of a human drama that challenges us,” said the Episcopate on 16 November in the Advent Message.
The bishops assured that “even in the midst of uncertainty and pain, the Kingdom of God is present in our history and multiple signs of a new world are manifested among us.”
In this sense, they pointed out that in Nicaragua “we must all walk together, no one should be left behind.”
“We must all have the chance to develop and make Nicaragua a country of brothers. Let us always seek to do good, so that we speak more and more as brothers and leave out individualism”, they added.
Therefore, they encouraged the population to participate in the search for personal conversion. In the case of Catholics, to “be as a Church at the level of the mission that the Lord has entrusted to us.”
The president said that these people enter claiming to be “political refugees” when in reality they are “economic refugees” fleeing the crisis in the neighboring country, led by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega.