The Nicaraguan government, through the National Police, prohibited the Church from taking the saints to the streets since last February, when it did not authorize them to celebrate the viacrusis processions during Lent.
The police order was adopted after the president of Nicaragua and Supreme Chief of the National Police, Daniel Ortega, branded priests, bishops, cardinals and Pope Francis as a “mafia”.
The bishop of the Nicaraguan diocese of León and Chinandega (west), René Sócrates Sandigo, explained then that the police authority only authorized the Stations of the Cross to be carried out internally or in the atrium of the parishes, but not in the streets.
Report a violation of religious freedom
Nicaraguan Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes shared the program of activities for Holy Week at the Managua Cathedral in which he confirmed that the processions, including the Penitential Stations of the Cross, will take place on the temple grounds and not on the streets of the capital where thousands of thousands of of people come
The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh) denounced through its social networks that “the prohibition of Lenten and Holy Week processions in Nicaragua are a flagrant violation of freedom of conscience, religion and freedom of expression.”
“This year, without processions at the national level, Holy Week will be incomplete, mutilated, the body of popular participation will be missing, but in the face of so much repression the fervor of the people must resist and strengthen itself,” said that organization, which predicted that “earlier that later the Nicaraguans will go out again in processions and in freedom”.