Prominent priest reportedly abducted by dictatorship in Nicaragua

ACI Prensa Staff, Jul 30, 2024 / 17:02 pm (CNA).

Father Frutos Constantino Valle Salmerón, administrator “ad omnia” of the Diocese of Estelí in Nicaragua, has been “abducted, interrogated,” and placed under surveillance in a Catholic Church formation house by the Nicaraguan National Police, according to lawyer and researcher Martha Patricia Molina, who shared the case on X on July 27.

Molina is the author of “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church?”, a report of over 300 pages that in its last update cited at least 667 attacks against the Catholic Church since April 2018.

“I don’t doubt that during the transfer from [the town of] Somoto to [the capital] Managua he was interrogated and surely psychologically tortured, as is the custom of the Sandinista guard. Then they took him to a formation house where he remains imprisoned under police surveillance,” Molina said.

In a July 29 statement to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, Molina said that Valle, an 80-year-old priest with more than 50 years of service, suffers from “multiple illnesses” and was “arbitrarily abducted.”

In 2023, the Holy See appointed Valle as executor “ad omnia” of the Diocese of Estelí, allowing him to carry out all ordinary functions of pastoral governance except those reserved to a bishop.

The Diocese of Estelí has ​​been without a bishop since 2021. Bishop Rolando Álvarez, the bishop of Matagalpa, was appointed apostolic administrator in July of that year, but in August 2022 the prelate was first confined to his residence by police, then abducted and transferred in the middle of the night to Managua and kept under house arrest. In February 2023, he was sentenced to 26 years in prison. Álvarez was finally deported to Rome in January of this year, where he now lives in exile.

Molina told ACI Prensa that she does not know the specific reasons why the government of President Daniel Ortega took these actions against Valle but noted that “we should not rule out that it was because of the ordination of priests that did not take place.”

On Saturday, July 27, three deacons were to be ordained priests in the Diocese of Estelí by the bishop of Jinotega and president of the Nicaraguan Bishops’ Conference, Carlos Herrera. However, on Friday, July 26, Deacon Wendel Fuentes Chavarria shared a note that the ordination had been canceled. Along with him, Kelin José Martínez Rayo and Ervin Joel Hernández Umanzor were also to be ordained priests.

The order to cancel the ordination was allegedly given by the dictatorship. According to the news outlet Mozaico, a source within the Church stated that the local police came and told Valle that “the ordination was not authorized.”

Molina also indicated that “at least three priests are under threat of being imprisoned or deported and several laypeople are under investigation” by the authorities.

Since 2018, the dictatorship of Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, has intensified its persecution of the Catholic Church.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.