Bishop Silvio Báez: “Tyrants show idolatry to money with human sacrifice”
By Octavio Enríquez en Confidencial October 10, 2021
The Auxiliary Bishop of Managua, Silvio Báez, referred in his homily this Sunday October 10th to some economic groups who place profits above collective wellbeing, by making themselves accomplices of those who wield political power, and also criticized tyrants who worship money, even offering it “human sacrifices”.
Báez reflected in Saint Agatha parish in Miami, Florida, on the bible story of the rich man who came up to Jesus to ask him what he must do to inherit eternal life, but he left when he heard the advice that he should sell what he had and give it to the poor. The religious leader found several lessons for the social life of all based on that experience.
“Some groups of economic power in our countries, interested only in the wellbeing of financial markets and the growth of their capital, have made themselves into accomplices of those who exercise political power, mortgaging respect for human rights and the survival of democratic institutions. Let us learn the lesson. The results are always disastrous. When money is not at the service of the common good and is placed above the dignity of people, the heart is made blind, societies are dehumanized and the poor are forgotten,” he stressed.
Báez went into exile in 2019, on the advice of Pope Francis, after receiving threats from fanatics of the party in power for his position in defense of human rights against the regime of Daniel Ortega, who has been in power since 2007 and aspires to re-election this coming November. The voting process is considered a farse, because Ortega has eliminated the political competition and reinforced his control over the Supreme Electoral Council.
The Ortega regime had as one of its principle pillars, prior to the repression of 2018 when a separation occurred, the agreement with the private sector that allowed both sectors to co-govern for nine years under the so-called “dialogue and consensus model”, which his counterparts considered exportable to the region, in spite of the costs that the advance of the Ortegista dictatorial project meant, in whose establishment the rights of the citizens have been violated, among those the right to mobilization, freedom of expression and to fair elections.
In the recent repressive escalation that began this past May, 37 civic and political leaders were detained, among them at least two leaders of the private sector: the former president of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP), José Adán Aguerri, and the president of the PROAMERICA group, Luis Rivas. Civil society has criticized the leadership of the private sector for not having made a pronouncement on the upcoming election, which also are criticized by the international community, who in addition have requested the freedom of political prisoners.
The tyrants and the idolatry of money
Báez evoked in his homily the exhortation Evengeliii Gaudium of Pope Francis and later explained the roots of social uncertainty in the attachment to money and in clinging in a despotic way to power.
“In the attachment to money and the ambition for wealth is the root of painful dramas, social uncertainty and political crisis that our countries are experiencing. Those who cling to power and exercise it in an irrational, despotic and violent way, what they seek is to conserve the wealth that they have obtained through their power. Behind totalitarian powers are always some type of idolatry of money, which tyrants worship, offering it even human sacrifices,” denounced the bishop.
According to him, dictators do not hesitate to “repress with violence, take away freedom, intimidate with incendiary speeches and falsify democratic processes. Idolatrous tyrants, no matter how much they invoke the name of God and present themselves as religious people, have turned their backs on Jesus, like the man of the Gospel, and are on the path to their own ruin,” he warned.
In a recent speech in the opening of the re-election campaign, Ortega accused the Bishops of being terrorists because of the mediating role that the religious men played in the opposition protests of 2018, harshly repressed by the Executive Branch, leaving 328 people murdered, 2,000 wounded and more than 100,000 people in exile.
This past October 4th Ortega said that it was the bishops who gave him a shameful document in the name of the opponents, asking them to leave power. According to him, his Government was a victim of a State coup. Nevertheless, the evidence gathered by international organizations showed that there was excessive use of state force, composed of the Police and paramilitary groups connected to the regime, against the citizenry.
Since the opposition protests, and in an attempt to silence the criticism and stop the mobilizations, a campaign of state repression was unleashed that has been denounced by the religious and the international community, where crimes described as crimes against humanity were committed, something which Ortega does not accept.
“Who chose them? What people elected them? How many votes have they had to be elected bishops? Ah! But they are there as if they were elected, as if they were an elected authority and as if they had rights, since when are those the functions of a bishop?;” rebuked the ruler in the quoted speech.
This past August the Archdiocese of Managua, presided over by Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes and the Auxiliary Bishop Báez, denounced that the conditions did not exist for democratic elections in Nicaragua, while they lamented the forced exclusion of the Presidential candidates who were arbitrarily detained. In total there are seven of them.
The speech of the presidential couple has increased in tone along with the judicial repression. This same August of this pronouncement of the Archdiocese, Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, called the priests “sons of the devil.”