Religión Digital, March 28, 2023
“The seminary is currently the most disappointing and mediocre place that there is in Managua. Absolute silence has been forced on us for some time: talking about the reality of the country in class, during meals, in our social networks, in prayer, is prohibited.”
“When Mons. Silvio Báez left, we were not allowed to say anything. When they began to arrest the leaders of civil society, not one prayer was allowed in any of the so many Liturgies of the Hours that we do”
“When I hear that the church is the last bastion of resistance, it is clear to me that they are not saying it because of the priests, nor the seminarians, and much less because of the superficial and limited educators that we have, but because of the people, the laity, men and women whose faith is greater than their fear.”
“I hope the hierarchy becomes convinced that they have not gained anything by hiding themselves like armadillos. Just the opposite”
March 28, 2023
Dear José Manuel,
While in my pastoral work placement, just past 9 pm photos began to arrive of Mons. Rolando Álvarez which the Ortega-Murillo regime decided to make public yesterday (Saturday, March 25). I shared them with my other fellow seminarians. The seminary where I study is a small example of what our country is today: some were saying “well, seems like the dude is doing well, he even has chubby cheeks;” other were upset over this false and manipulated exhibition. Most only made a gesture of regret and passed on to the next topic: the flowers for Holy Week, who is going to sing the Easter Proclamation, where they are going to take their cassock to be ironed, which “anti-liturgical” songs needed to be avoided…
The joy over the liberation of the 222 political prisoners has been diminishing and the reality has come back to smack us in the face: these days we saw how the police showed up at the María Magdalena parish to arrest the pastor, and the foreign vicar, who has a contact with the Police and the Government, had to intervene to keep him from being arrested. In Tipitapa they arrested a young layperson after the Way of the Cross. They abducted a woman doctor from the opposition, raided her home and then expelled her, banished her from her country. They will not delay in stripping her of her nationality as well. Ways of the Cross continue to be prohibited and any public expression of the faith, and now several laypeople and priests have told me that the Police show up in the neighborhoods (Altagracia, Batahola, Schick, Reparto San Juan, Villa Fontana, Bello Horizonte, Linda Vista) to take photos, remind them that there can be no processions, ask for data about the priests, note down the time activities take place.
And the seminary is currently the most disappointing and mediocre place that there is in Managua. For some time now absolute silence has been forced on us: talking about the reality of the country in class, during meals, in our social networks, in prayer, is prohibited. What they have achieved is a total apathy of the seminarians, and additionally transmitted by some educators more concerned about the flow of their cassocks and the use of some ridiculous hats, than about forming our critical consciousness.
It is as if they would have injected us with anesthesia after 2018. When Mons. Silvio Báez left, we were not allowed to say anything. When they began to arrest the leaders of civil society, they did not allow a single prayer in any of the many liturgies of the hours that we do. When they took Matagalpa and Mons. Rolando Álvarez remained under arrest, on very few occasions was he mentioned in the Eucharists. His Eminence, like so many other smooth-spoken seminarians like to call him, of the times he has come, has never spoken even once about the reality of the country and the church, or about Mons. Rolando.
Would you believe me if I told you that while the words of Pope Francis were going around the world calling the two criminals who govern us “unbalanced”, hardly a dozen seminarians knew about them? That here people are not reading Evangelii Gaudium, Laudato Si or Fratelli Tutti? On the other hand, you can hear quoted Escrivá of Balaguer and Pius X to the point of boredom.
On March 24 when the memory of Saint Oscar Romero is celebrated, not a small amount of seminarians refused to celebrate his memory, calling him an old communist, liberation theologian, heretic, denier of healthy doctrine, leftist politician. But if you would ask them, José Manuel, if they have read just one book of liberation theology or a biography of Mons. Romero, you would realize that the most that they have read, and done so without understanding it, is the Treatise on True Devotion of Mary and two poorly written articles from Aciprensa on Mons. Romero.
I write you this letter because I see my departure from the seminary as coming sooner. I cannot take it any more seeing how the church has decided to handle us like the horses that pull carts in Managua: with two blinders on the eyes so they cannot see what is next to them. It bothers the educators that we might see and talk about the news of the country. The professors of Theology, Philosophy, Preparatory courses do not even dare to reflect on what has happened in recent years. In the protests of 2018 I personally saw how the youth from our youth pastoral groups, our altar servers, our catechists, our Eucharistic ministers, the sisters, took to the streets. And us? What did they constrain us to? To not saying a single word, not then nor much less now.
What type of priests do they expect us to be? From this new generation of young priests who are delighted to use birettas and pre-conciliar ornaments? From these priests who in their homilies make dissertations about some dogma that respond to questions that no one is asking? That we might repeat that sick obsession that they have here against invented gender ideology, homosexuals, feminists while they ignore all the problems that exist here because of the homosexual relations between seminarians? We who look the other way when facing problems?
José Manuel, my crisis in this place has led me to hear what you cannot imagine against Pope Francis. One more reason to not want to continue ahead with a vocation which will never be able to flourish in an authoritarian, misogynist, traditional place so isolated from the national reality.
The reality of the Church in Nicaragua, after the break in relations with the Vatican, has gotten worse. We are living in a big jail cell. No one dares to speak. Yesterday I read an anonymous letter written by religious clandestinely. We are paying a high price those of us who want to be faithful to the Gospel. That is my biggest lesson. My commitment to the poor and victims is much more important than staying in this place, stuck in time, and that instead of making us think, alienates us. If I could go to confession, I would do it for all the silence I have kept in spite of what my conscience has been telling me, for not expressing one word of solidarity for the political prisoners, for leading the youth who I work with to an indifference in the face of the reality, for laughing at the empty jokes of the educators and fellow seminarians who denigrate the dignity of women, gays, those from other political perspectives. That is my greatest sin: my silence.
I hope the Episcopal Conference, I hope Cardinal Brenes, might see that what our Church is experiencing is their responsibility, that the more silent they are, the harder will be the blows, that the environment of repression is also being experienced within the Church and the seminarians, that there are also seminarians supporters of the Sandinista Front who report to the Political Secretaries about our activities, that those who believe themselves to be safe within the doors of what they call “the heart of the diocese” are not, no matter how much they might hide themselves. And no one says anything.
Nicaragua is being broken into pieces, many relatives of my fellow seminarians have also experienced the drama of the massive migration, the loss of jobs for being blue and white, the continuous oversight, the fear of being arrested. When I hear that the Church is the last bastion of resistance, it is clear to me that they do not say it because of the priests, nor the seminarians and much less because of the superficial and limited educators that we have, but because of the people, the laity, men and women whose faith is greater than their fear.
I hope the hierarchy might be convinced that they have earned nothing by hiding like armadillos.Just the opposite. I hope the pair of dictators, whose hands have the blood of so many innocent people, might also be convinced that they will not be able to do away with the faith of the people. I hope I recover something of peace in my conscience after so much imposed and accepted silence, outside of this seminary. It is now time to wake up, that we all wake up and fight to recover our Nicaragua. It does not matter how dark this long night that we Nicaraguans are experiencing might be. As a friend said to me, one day it will be dawn.
*This letter is the anonymous testimony of 2 active seminarians and one who left before this was published, whose names and places of formation are omitted for security reasons.