Managua, Nicaragua, Jul 24, 2018 / 03:06 am (CNA).- A fire in the church. Bullet holes in the tabernacle. Students fleeing for their lives.
Father Raul Zamora, who serves as parish priest at Divine Mercy parish in Nicaragua, told CNA about his decision to take in 150 university students after paramilitary opened fire on their protest earlier this month – and how prayer sustained them through the more than 15 hours of gunfire that followed.
On July 13, students at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua in Managua were protesting President Daniel Ortega’s pension reforms and increasingly authoritarian rule – part of larger, national protests that had been ongoing since April.
When the Nicaraguan government forces’ repression of the student protests turned violent that day, some students were on their cell phones calling their parents to say goodbye because they were sure that they were going to die. Others called Fr. Zamora.
“That university is actually under my pastoral care,” said Zamora. “It is right next to our parish. I am in charge of attending to those students spiritually. I knew the students personally.”
“I told them, ‘Come to the parish. Come to the parish. Don’t stay there,’” said the priest.
Students began to arrive at Divine Mercy Church in groups, and Zamora and other church staff drove over to the university to search for the wounded. They drove back and forth six or seven times. Police and paramilitary were continuing to attack the campus.
“Every time the students tried to go into the parish cars, they would start shooting,” said Zamora.
He thought that the students would be safe once they were in the church, but then the paramilitary gunfire was directed at the parish itself.
Joshua Partlow, a Washington Post reporter who had been covering the protests, ended up taking refuge along with the students in Divine Mercy Church.
The students “carried the wounded into the Rev. Raul Zamora’s rectory and put them on chairs or on the blood-spattered tile floor,” wrote Partlow.
“Not long after 6 p.m., with several high-pitched cracks, the mood took a dark turn. The faraway shooting was suddenly nearby. The paramilitaries had appeared, cutting off the only exit from Divine Mercy and firing at the remaining barricade just outside the church. It became clear that everyone inside . . . would not be going anywhere,” he explained.
They remained in the church overnight, sustaining more than 15 hours of gunfire, until Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes Solorzano and Archbishop Waldemar Sommertag, the apostolic nuncio, were able to negotiate the student’s release on Saturday morning. Fr. Zamora had been on the phone with them throughout the night explaining the situation.
Throughout the night, Zamora led students in prayer in the divine mercy chaplet and the rosary.
At one moment, when the shooting was particularly intense and everyone was lying on the ground, Partlow remembers some of the prayers Zamora said quietly with the students.
“Lord, we ask you to protect us in this moment,” he said.
“We believe in you, Lord, those of us who have no strength against this great army,” he murmured. “Help us, Lord.”
“The whole night we had a lot of time to pray. The bullets were non-stop,” Zamora told CNA.
He noted that many of the protesting students who took refuge in the church were not practicing Catholics.
“There were students with me in that moment from different religions, different denominations, atheists. In some way, it was very moving to me to see some of those students, who didn’t believe in anything, come over and hug me, crying and say, ‘If I were to believe in a God, I would believe in your God.’ That was, for me, very powerful,” said the priest.
“This is a moment when the Church gives witness and really shines forth the face of Christ in us,” he continued.
At one point late in the night, a part of the church caught fire, and a student called Father Zamora over from the rectory as it was put out. That is when he saw the bullet holes in the church’s divine mercy image and in the tabernacle. The student did not know what a tabernacle was, so the priest had to explain. He noted that the Blessed Sacrament was unharmed in the attack.
Two students were killed and at least 10 were injured by the paramilitary forces on July 13. More than 300 people have been killed since the protests began in April.
Zamora reflected on what he considers the lessons of the “persecuted church” in Nicaragua both now and in past decades:
“If the cross is not in our life, if we are not willing to suffer for love, then our religion just stays as something that is exterior. Just trying to do what is ritually appropriate. Our faith starts when we have that deep conviction in Jesus and his message. This is what we learned.”
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Another political stunt.
SOL,
I expect some people got inspired to participate in this for political reasons but still, good for the KC helping these folks at Christmas time.
I don’t like immigration used as a tool to gain political power & a larger constituency for Democrats either, but you know without it we’re going to be in the same kind of demographic implosion as Europe & Japan face. Look at the current US birth rates. Pretty dismal.
The strategy should be to attract honest, hardworking Christian folk from South of the border & not alienate them so that they run straight into the arms of liberal politicians who want to use them to overturn conservative states like TX.
I don’t believe liberal Democrats have the immigrants’ best interest-witness their campaign to abort migrant girls’ infants. But liberals claim to & they don’t publicly show the hostility that many of our conservatives do. We might could learn something from that.
Why not try the novel idea of increasing the native American birthrate? There are many valid reasons to declare an immigration moratorium and no good ones for continuing mass Third World immigration.
Tony,
Amen to your comments. And if demographic trends continue, the majority population will eventually be traditional Catholics, Amish, orthodox Jews, and others who bother to reproduce themselves. But that may take some time.
Mrscracker, the groups you list will be swamped by the dispararte (they are hardly all Latin American or Christian) Third World mob that is being ushered into this country by a treasonous elite. They will be united, temporarily, anyway, by their resentment of the country that was foolish enough to let them in. When the remnant middle class backbone of Americais finally vanquished, the war of all against all that is barely being suppressed today, will begin in earnest. May I ask if you at least oppose Muslim immigration into Western countries?
Mrscracker,
In an age of the ongoing collapse of industrial systems predicated upon cheap energy and easy access to resources, the problem of population implosion will eventually take care of itself, as those who are willing to surmount the hardship and reproduce will replace those who cannot.
The case for increasing the population through the reception of immigrants is one predicated upon infinite growth, which is not sustainable, and as you noted, aids the leftist revolutionaries. Immigrants are already alienated in so far as they have and seek to maintain a different identity and wishful thinking will not cause integration or their voluntary abandonment of their identity. And hostility by those being overwhelmed by them is a natural and just response. Violence is more likely than not if their numbers continue to increase. At this point the consequences are probably already in motion and very little can probably be done to prevent them. What can be done though is for Roman Catholics to preserve the credibility of their church and religion, but their bishops are ignorant of the dangers of the current situation and they are content to think the status quo can eventually favor their institution.
In continuing their current course Latin bishops will discredit themselves and their religion if and when there is a reaction to the status quo and the elites behind it.
Well stated, SOL. Based on their extreme leftist position on immigration alone, it is very hard for this practicing Catholic to regard the great majority of the Church hierarchy as being anything other than an enemy of my family, country and civilization.
SOL,
Thank you for your comments too.
Our plummeting fertility rates don’t foretell anything like infinite growth. More likely shrinking and aging. Without immigration that’s going to happen a whole lot sooner.
A smaller population isn’t the problem as much as an age imbalanced population. If you take a look at the demographic data and projections you see increasing numbers of elderly and fewer and fewer young people entering the workforce.
Birth rates are falling globally in all but a couple regions. One day we may wish we had more Christian immigrants to fill the empty places in our nation.
I don’t believe mass immigration is a good idea nor do I believe in open borders but Americans seem to have so little appreciation of their own culture that they can’t be bothered to create another generation to pass it down to.
The economic system and the decisions of the elites are based on the fantasy of infinite growth.
“but Americans seem to have so little appreciation of their own culture that they can’t be bothered to create another generation to pass it down to.”
I suspect this may be more true of blue urban areas than red rural areas, which have other difficulties.
See this link for more on infinite growth: https://psmag.com/.amp/magazine/fallacy-of-endless-growth
Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem to comply with the census. How many people were in the same boat and were there because of the census? The story of Mary and Joseph not finding a room at an inn could be a story of a community overwhelmed by there being more people than the community could handle at one time.
*
The USA may be a rich powerful nation, but it does not have unlimited resources. There are only so many people that the USA can admit at one time while maintaining an orderly immigration process. A responsible host doesn’t invite more guests than the host can provide hospitality for. Illegal immigrants are gate-crashers. The mess at the Southern border is what happens when you have a large number of gate-crashers.
SOL,
Thank you very much for the link to that article.
I think that illustrates exactly what the misconceptions are about population. People are still basing their fears on theories from the 1970’s. It’s not 1972 anymore and things have changed dramatically.
Population implosion is what we need to be concerned about in the coming decades.
Though it’s certainly not a Catholic book and the author doesn’t hold our views on contraception, etc., I’d really recommend reading “Factfulness ” by Hans Rosling. Things really have changed globally and will continue to change. Not necessarily for the better, but not what was predicted in 1972 either.
God bless!