The exiled auxiliary bishop of Managua living in the United States responded that the most recent insults and attacks by Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega called “corrupt and criminal.”
“How much ignorance, how many lies, and how much cynicism! A dictator giving democracy lessons,” Bishop Silvio Baez lamented on Twitter.
Báez said Ortega is “someone who exercises power illegitimately, criticizing the authority that Jesus granted to his Church; an atheist, corrupt and criminal, avowing he is inspired by Christ.”
The Nicaraguan dictator took the occasion to attack the Catholic Church. He said he was raised in Catholicism and then after railing against the Catholic Church, the popes, and Spanish colonialism stated that “Christ was always solidary. His message was of peace and then they tortured him. They killed him. But Christ didn’t die; physically they killed him on the cross. But Christ rose in the peoples and he lives in Christian peoples, not by the example that the priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes can give, who are a mafia.”
After accusing the Church and the Vatican of “crimes,” Ortega questioned: “What respect can I have for the bishops I knew here in Nicaragua if they were Somoza supporters? I was a boy when Somoza’s funeral took place, where the bishops went, burying Somoza like a prince, like a cardinal of the Church, simply because Somoza was a henchman, who gave all the advantages to the Church.”
“He was a servant, an agent of Yankee imperialism, and they treated him like that,” added the Nicaraguan dictator, who has been in power for 16 years, since 10 January, 2007.