One of the three deacons who was to be ordained a priest of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua this Saturday, July 27, reported the cancellation of the ordination Mass, which is due to an order from the Daniel Ortega dictatorship.
Deacon Wendel Fuentes Chavarria shared a note on 26 July, Friday that he reported the event’s cancellation, a text published by the Nicaraguan newspaper Mosaico. Along with him, Kelin José Martínez Rayo and Ervin Joel Hernández Umanzor were also to be ordained priests.
All three belong to the diocese of Estelí, which has not had a bishop since 2021 and where the Bishop of Matagalpa, Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, was appointed Apostolic Administrator. He was kidnapped by the dictatorship, prevented from leaving his home, sentenced to 26 years in prison, imprisoned and finally deported to Rome in January of this year, where he now lives in exile.
“With a heart full of hope, joy and spiritual health, I want to inform you that the priestly ordination of this unworthy servant of the Lord has been cancelled for reasons that are still unclear, but which are external to our ecclesial life,” explains Deacon Wendel Fuertes in his note.
“I encourage you to continue praying for priestly vocations. We hope that God will soon allow us to serve this diocese more and better as priests,” the text adds.
A Mosaico article from July 25 indicates that “an ecclesiastical source” informed them of the cancellation of the ordination following the order from the local police.
“Only the police arrived to see Father Frutos (Valle Salmerón —administrator ‘Ad Omnia’ of the Diocese of Estelí— to tell him that the ordination was not authorized,” said the source.
In January 2023 and in the forced absence of Bishop Álvarez, who at that time was under house arrest, Fr. Frutos Constantino Valle Salmerón (79) was appointed administrator ad omnia of the diocese of Estelí, to ensure the administrative management and assets of the local Church.
The Mass of priestly ordination this Saturday was to be presided over by Monsignor Carlos Herrera, Bishop of Jinotega and president of the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua, who last week had celebrated the first priestly and diaconal ordination in the diocese of Matagalpa, after the exile of Monsignor Álvarez.
Since 2018, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, has intensified the persecution against the Catholic Church.
In October 2023, Nicaraguan researcher and lawyer Martha Patricia Molina presented the fourth instalment of her report Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church? , which reports 667 attacks and aggressions against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua.
Molina has announced that the fifth instalment of the report will take place on 15 August.