Masaya, Nicaragua, Jun 22, 2018 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- Amid continued unrest in Nicaragua, Church leaders traveled to the city of Masaya Thursday to pray and appeal for peace.
Protests began April 18 after Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega announced social security and pension reforms. The changes were soon abandoned in the face of widespread, vocal opposition, but protests only intensified after more than 40 protestors were killed by security forces initially.
More than 200 in the country have been killed in the violence, according to estimates.
On June 19, government-linked paramilitary groups entered Masaya, clashing with protesters. Six people were killed and 35 wounded. Masaya is one of the cities in the west of the country which has shown resistance to the paramilitaries and pushed for Ortega to be removed from office.
With reports of government forces surrounding Masaya again on Thursday, Cardinal Leopoldo José Brenes, Bishop Silvio José Báez and Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Stanislaw Waldemar Sommertag traveled to the city in hopes of mediating the situation there and calling for an end to the violence.
Bishop Báez, who was born in Masaya, led a procession with the Blessed Sacrament through the streets filled with hundreds of people, some crying and on their knees. When they arrived at San Sebastián church in the Monimbó neighborhood, he spoke to the crowds, voicing solidarity and grief.
The bishop called Masaya a “martyred” city and compared it to “Jesus crucified,” according to the Managua archdiocese’s Facebook page. He said that like Jesus, the city will rise again.
Bishop Báez said that as they were walking through the city streets, he heard cries for justice but reminded the people that justice is not vengeance.
“Here at the church of San Sebastián I want to remind [everyone] of one of the commandments of God: ‘Thou shalt not kill’.”
The bishop then appealed to “those who came to the city to kill… not one more death in Masaya.”
Archbishop Sommertag echoed the call for peace.
“We cannot respond to violence with…more violence, because remember that any death here is an outrage to God, that is why you have to become aware, it’s a call to everyone to be responsible for your actions small or great.”
In a follow-up to the day’s events, the Archdiocese of Managua posted on Facebook that Cardinal Brenes spoke for an hour with the police commissioner, who “committed to stop the attacks.”
The cardinal and the nuncio asked for the release of all those who had been arrested, presenting a list of detainees, and the police commissioner agreed to release them.
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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Rodrigo Iván Cortés, president of the National Front for the Family, described Claudia Sheinbaum’s victory as “very bad news for life, family, and freedoms.” / Credit: EWTN Noticias/Screenshot
ACI Prensa Staff, Jun 5, 2024 / 18:50 pm (CNA).
Various pro-life, pro-family, and lay leaders of the Catholic Church in Mexico have reacted with concern to the election of Claudia Sheinbaum as president of the country.
Rodrigo Iván Cortés, president of the National Front for the Family, described Sheinbaum’s victory as “very bad news for life, family, and freedoms.”
For the pro-family leader, Sheinbaum represents continuity with the same progressive agenda of the outgoing administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Citing the growing legalization of abortion and use of gender ideology throughout the country, Cortés explained that “the López Obrador regime culminated in a culture of death, of ideology, not only of gender confusion but also of socialist populist indoctrination.”
However, in an interview with “EWTN Noticias,” EWTN’s Spanish-language news program, Cortés emphasized that just as people didn’t vote for López Obrador because of his position on abortion, gender ideology, or for freedoms to be canceled, people didn’t vote for Sheinbaum for those same reasons. What happens, he indicated, is that “when they come to power, they implement [that agenda].”
For Juan Dabdoub, president of the Mexican Family Council (ConFamilia), there are “two important factors” that would explain Sheinbaum’s victory in the presidential elections.
The first, he told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, is that in Mexico there is “a poor political culture, which makes a large majority of the people manipulable.”
A second factor, Dabdoub noted, is that “Mexican Catholicism has failed in something extremely important that Pope St. John Paul II already pointed out: ‘A faith that does not create culture is a useless faith.’”
In a Jan. 16, 1982, speech, John Paul II said: “A faith that does not become culture is a faith that is not fully accepted, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived.”
For the president of ConFamilia, “Mexico has stopped being a country of practicing Catholics and has become one of simply baptized people; and when a Catholic doesn’t live his faith in the outside world, that is, outside his home and his parish, those who dominate the world take control.”
Dabdoub considered Sheinbaum’s victory to be “a brutal threat” to the defense of life, family, and freedoms, since she has “a radical progressive agenda.”
‘Formation and serious work are needed’
For Father Hugo Valdemar, who for 15 years headed the communications office of the Primatial Archdiocese of Mexico when Cardinal Norberto Rivera led the archdiocese, “Catholics must learn that social media are not enough to really influence; serious formation and work are needed, otherwise everything remains up in the air.”
“The big problem is that we haven’t been seriously forming the laity, and nothing is being done to do so,” he told ACI Prensa. However, he noted that with a Sheinbaum administration, “the Church is not in danger. I don’t see an adverse climate, much less persecutory, and Christian values have been violated for a long time.”
What’s next in the battle for life and family?
Pilar Rebollo, director of the Steps for Life platform, pointed out that Sheinbaum’s election “means much more work” for pro-lifers: “It requires us to be united, it requires us to be coordinated,” anticipating possible “frontal attacks on what we know as our values that are foundational.”
Rebollo also emphasized the importance of serving underserved and vulnerable populations, which, she considered, were key to Sheinbaum’s victory. This, she said, must be done “not out of a desire for numbers but zeal for souls, a desire to [heal] wounds, zeal for humanity, to see Christ in others.”
It should be noted that all three candidates for president — Sheinbaum, Xóchitl Gálvez, and Jorge Álvarez Máynez — backed the legalization of abortion and the LGBTQ policy agenda, so Mexican voters had no real alternative to vote for a pro-life and pro-family candidate.
Sheinbaum is the first person of Jewish ancestry to be elected to Mexico’s presidency. In February of this year, she visited Pope Francis at the Vatican, where she asked him to bless a rose wrought in silver by a Mexican artisan. She later presented it to the rector of the Basilica Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
Jason Poblete of the Global Liberty Alliance anticipates that Claudia Sheinbaum will govern under the shadow of the current president and his leftist party. Credit: EWTN News Nightly/Screenshot
During her campaign, Sheinbaum was seen wearing a skirt bearing the image of the revered Virgin of Guadalupe. According to Jason Poblete of the Global Liberty Alliance, Sheinbaum also wore a rosary around her neck at a public event. He and others suggested that this was an act of demagoguery intended to appeal to Catholics, who comprise approximately 78% of the country’s population.
Sheinbaum, 61, holds a doctorate in physics specializing in energy and taught at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. Her political militancy began during her student years, joining a group that became the founding youth movement of the socialist Party of Democratic Revolution. She later joined the ruling Morena party. She has been described as a climate activist, having been part of a Nobel Prize-winning commission advising the United Nations on climate change.
Sheinbaum’s tenure as Mexico City mayor was marked by progressive initiatives. For example, the World Economic Forum, led by Klaus Schwab, noted that as mayor she ended public school policy requiring gender-appropriate uniforms for children. Sheinbaum said: “The era when girls had to wear a skirt and boys had to wear trousers has been left behind; I think that’s passed into history,” and added: “Boys can wear skirts if they want and girls can wear pants if they want.”
While she did not raise the issue during her campaign, Sheinbaum’s Morena party is a firm supporter of abortion. The newly-elected congress will be seated in September, one month before Sheinbaum’s inauguration, thus allowing incumbent president López Obrador an opportunity to push through his legislative initiatives.
Poblete told “EWTN News Nightly” that the 2024 election may have led to a Morena majority in Mexico’s Congress, which has vowed to amend the constitution in order for Mexican Supreme Court justices to be elected by popular ballot, thereby confirming partisan control of the heretofore independent judiciary, which would rule on issues such as abortion and matters of gender ideology. He fears that Sheinbaum will govern under the shadow of the current president and his leftist party.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Caracas, Venezuela, Jul 8, 2019 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- The Venezuelan bishops’ justice and peace commission have condemned the death in custody of Rafael Acosta Arévalo, a naval captain who was arrested over an alleged assassination plot against president Nicolas Maduro.
Acosta’s lawyer alleges the officer had been tortured while in custody. Two members of Venezuela’s military counterintelligence agency have been charged in relation to Acosta’s death.
The bishops also protested that police had allegedly disfigured and left blind Rufo Chacón Parada, a youth, as he was demonstrating about the lack supplies in the country.
“The Venezuelan state is responsible. We will not consent to the manipulation, dissimulation and downplaying of these grave incidents,” the bishops’ justice and peace commission stated July 4.
“It is our commitment as a Church, which sees in the suffering faces of the relatives and those of the victims the suffering of Our Lord Jesus Christ. These two victims represent today the cries of many other citizens who have been subjected to the same patterns and whose cases have been blacked out.”
The bishops said that “the forced disappearance, torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, excesses committed by the police … against Venezuelans are practices that have taken hold in the military and police corps, and are occurring on an ongoing basis, like a secret that cries out in our consciences.”
“This immoral, ignoble and dishonorable conduct is an attack on the dignity of the person and violates the conventions and treaties signed by the republic which directly makes responsible those officials that order, apply or tolerate this conduct or areable to prevent it, and do not do so,” they added.
In the case of Chacón “the disproportionate use of force once again leaves indelible consequences on this family: a young bachelor who is now blind, disfigured, and with no desire to live, a traumatized mother who in addition to life’s basic rights being denied her, that of protesting, of complaining, of finding unacceptable this fragile existence which we have been subjected to by government mismanagement. Silence is not an option in face of so much outrage,” the bishops said.
The bishops demanded that Acosta’s case be investigated “in accordance with the international standards and protocols related to cases of torture and not as a simple criminal investigation. That includes conducting a proper autopsy in accordance with law and with independent experts and adequately preserving the entire body of evidence.”
The bishops noted that the men charged in relation to Acosta’s death, Lt Ascanio Tarascio and Sgt Estiben Zarate, are 22 and 23, and asked: “This is the generation the armed forces are passing the baton to? Who taught these young men how to do so much harm to their brothers? What are the responsibilities of their superiors in the chain of command in these institutions?”
They emphasized that “these young perpetrators are also victims of a system that has allowed this moral and spiritual degradation in our county.”
Acosta was captured by Venezuela’s Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence June 21, and he was later listed as among 14 Venezuelans arrested for participation in an alleged assassination plot.
Acosta appeared in a wheelchair before a military tribunal June 28, but collapsed before proceedings began. He died the following day in a military hospital.
Under Maduro’s socialist administration, Venezuela has been marred by violence and social upheaval, with severe shortages and hyperinflation. More than 4 million Venezuelans have emigrated since 2015.
Congresswoman América Rangel of Mexico City. / Credit: Official América Rangel website
ACI Prensa Staff, Feb 24, 2023 / 12:15 pm (CNA).
A group of LGBT demonstrators attacked the Mexico City Congress Feb. 22, damaging doors and windows. Some in… […]
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