98 year old priest homeless after assault of the regime against the Jesuits
In Onda Local, August 24, 2023
Adolfo López de la Fuente, 98 years old, is a scientist and priest of the Society of Jesus. He was one of six Jesuits expelled from the Central American University (UCA) and from their residence located in Villa Carmen, Managua, after the confiscation of both installations by the Ortega Murillo regime.
López de la Fuente, originally from Spain, now is in another Jesuit community, but he is not secure. “It seems like we are going to leave here as well, they are going to throw us out,” he said heavy hearted. “I am a foreigner, I asked to be nationalized, but they did not grant that to me, in spite of the fact that I wrote three books about mollusks of Nicaragua,” he said.
The priest believes that they will never grant him citizenship, because he was one of the specialists who wrote about the environmental impact that the construction of an interoceanic canal in Nicaragua would have on the country.
Adolfo López de la Fuente came to Nicaragua in 1979, when he was 54 years old, and he stayed here. He was one of the creators of the Center for Malacology and Animal Biodiversity of the UCA, where he investigates species of mollusks who live on land and in the ocean.
This research center has thousands of samples of mollusks collected not just by López de la Fuente, but by other researchers. It also has international collections which López de la Fuente collected in other countries.
The Center for Malacology and Animal Diversity: in addition to functioning as a museum, it is dedicated to research, teaching, and housing the most important malacological collection (marine and land mollusks) in Nicaragua and second most important in Central America.
All the natural patrimony of the Center for Malacology and Animal Biodiversity now is in the hands of the authorities imposed by the dictatorship in the “Casimiro Sotelo” University, which will function in the installations stolen from the UCA. On this campus are the years of work of López de la Fuente and his book “Molusco de Nicaragua” published in 2008.
He was not there the day on which the police and officials of the Supreme Court showed up at the Villa Carmen Jesuit residence. “I left everything in Villa Carmen, all my private possessions, in addition to my malacology things. I left a collection of 12,000 pieces of shells and conches. The only thing that I took was my watch and my wallet. I did not think that was a departure and that I was going to return that same day.”
With the uncertainty which the cancellation of the Society of Jesus in Nicaragua caused, he states that he does not know what his fate will be, “if we leave here, I do not know where I will go, maybe to Costa Rica, because I do not know whether I will get to Spain before I die.”
López de la Fuente gets excited talking about mollusks, he tells us that he was able to discover four new species for science through his investigations on mollusks. “There is a saying in the Bible that says God´s science covers the land like water floods the ocean,” he pointed out.
The priest feels nostalgic and wants to go back to his work to be with his colleagues again. “I send my regards to my fellow workers at the UCA, I do not know whether I will see them again, I am almost 100 years old and that is fine.”
Stripped of legal status and theft
The Society of Jesus in Nicaragua promoted different educational projects in the country, nevertheless on August 23 the cancelation of the legal status of the Association of the Society of Jesus in Nicaragua and the confiscation of all its assets was published in the Official Daily Record La Gaceta.
Among the justifications which the Ministry of the Interior offered, under the responsibility of the Ortegista María Amelia Coronel, alleged that the Jesuits “did not report their financial statements for the years 2020, 2021 and 2022.”
On August 19, three days after the confiscation of the UCA, six Jesuit priests were expelled from their residence in Villa Carmen, located in the southern zone of the UCA. Despite the fact that the Jesuits presented documents which showed that the residence was not part of the UCA property, they were expelled.
The six priests were moved to another Jesuit community where they are in safekeeping. The Society of Jesus is an order of the Catholic Church with more than 500 years of existence. In addition to the UCA, the Jesuits administer other educational institutions like the Fe y Alegría schools, the Centroamérica School and the Instituto Loyola.