Chile’s military diocese raided in abuse investigation

Father Alexis Oser. / Credit: Press Diocese of Alto Valle de Río Negro

ACI Prensa Staff, May 14, 2023 / 08:00 am (CNA).
After nine years without priestly ordinations, the Diocese of Alto Valle de Río Negro in Argentina on May 1 celebrated the o… […]

Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Nov 18, 2020 / 12:33 pm (CNA).- With Hurricane Iota becoming the second major hurricane to hit Central America this November, relief agencies have tried to prepare for even more destruction and have appealed for donations and support from around the world.

“Right now the world’s attention is focused elsewhere,” Conor Walsh, Catholic Relief Services’ manager in Honduras, told CNA’s Spanish-language sister agency ACI Prensa Nov. 16 before Iota made landfall.

“It’s been a little hard to get resources together to be able to respond effectively considering the scale of this emergency, but we’re doing what we can and we’re reaching out to all people of good will.”

“We are fully aware that there are other emergencies the world is dealing with right now. Let us not overlook Central America,” he said. “Let us not forget our brothers and sisters here in Honduras because they are suffering, and they are very very close to the United States. We should extend a helping hand.”

Hurricane Iota briefly reached Category 5 hurricane strength, then made landfall in Nicaragua Monday night with sustained winds of 155 mph, a Category 4 hurricane. It weakened to a Category 2 strength storm, with 105 mph winds, before becoming a tropical storm, National Public Radio reports.

The storm brought “catastrophic winds, life-threatening storm surge, and torrential rainfall,” the National Hurricane Center said. At least four adults and two minors were killed in Nicaragua, which lost electrical power along almost its entire coast. Tens of thousands of people took refuge in government shelters.

At least two people died on the Colombian island of Providencia, where 112 people were evacuated on Tuesday, CNN reports. The infrastructure on the island was completely wiped out. It is the first recorded Category 5 storm to hit the island and its neighbor San Andres.

Iota is the 30th named storm this season, and the strongest storm of the season. It follows soon after the Nov. 4 landfall of Hurricane Eta, which hit Nicaragua, Guatemala, and southern Belize.

“The situation in Honduras is already critical,” Walsh said before Iota’s landfall. “After Eta came through, thousands of people were displaced from their homes in the north. They’re living in shelters now. They’ve lost everything.”

“In more vulnerable rural communities, farmers lost their crops. This was just before they were going to harvest their bean crops and their corn, two basic staples,” said Walsh.

“Iota is expected to be worse. It is going right through the center of the country,” he said. “We’re bracing for the worst.”

Timothy Hansell, manager of Catholic Relief Services in Nicaragua, told National Public Radio that the relief agency aims to provide cleaning supplies and toilet paper to local residents, rebuild homes, and help farmers recover.

Caribbean coastal indigenous communities were among the hardest hit by Eta’s strong winds and floodwaters, he said. Many of their homes were destroyed. Nicaraguan farmers in the northern and central parts of the country lost as much as 50% of their bean crops, with heavy damage to rice, corn and vegetables.

Likewise, the immediate situation in Honduras is “a very, very critical situation,” Walsh said.

Catholic Relief Services is the U.S. bishops’ foreign relief agency. There are about 60 CRS staff based in Nicaragua’s national capital of Tegucigalpa, the city of San Pedro, and La Esperanza in the west of the country. They normally focus on improving agriculture, water supply and education. Aiding youth vulnerable to exploitation and unemployment is another area of their work.

“All of these programs are being interrupted now because of the emergency,” Walsh said. “We’re using whatever funding we can to provide immediate assistance for the families that have been so badly affected.”

There is great need for drinking water, food supplies, and biosafety equipment like masks, antiseptic gel and soap. There are fears that crowding at hurricane shelters will lead to the spread of coronavirus infections.

“People who are in shelters, for the most part, had to leave their homes without anything, much less a mask,” Walsh explained. “The conditions for propagation of COVID are rife in those shelters.”

According to Walsh, Honduras “is suffering the effects of climate change, and it is not responsible for this.”

“It is our duty as human beings to respond to that in a way that recognizes our common humanity,” he said.

Scientists say a changing climate and hotter oceans have contributed to stronger hurricanes. The water in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico is consistently 2 degrees hotter than a century ago, according to National Public Radio.

“Honduras is starting from a very vulnerable point to begin with,” Walsh continued. “Even without the hurricanes, even without COVID, Honduras was teetering on the edge because it’s such a poor country and it’s been so hard hit by climate change.”

The country is suffering an “acute food insecurity situation” with low food supplies after several seasons of drought.

“And add to that COVID. COVID locked down the economy. It closed markets. It made it even harder for people to make a living or an income,” said Walsh. “Now, what little is left, Eta damaged, and hurricane Iota is going to finish off.”

“What is going to be the result? In all likelihood, people who have lost everything are going to feel they have no option but to migrate. It’s going to translate into stronger migration pressures once again,” he added.

Walsh encouraged better ways of thinking about Honduras and its people.

“We have to get past this notion that Honduras is a source of problems or a source of migrants that we don’t want. It’s a neighbor of ours. It’s a place of great suffering, where poverty and exclusion explain why so many choose to leave the country,” he said. “The more that we can help Hondurans in Honduras, the better.”

Catholic Relief Services is accepting donations for hurricane relief through its website, www.crs.org.

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Matagalpa, Nicaragua, Jun 28, 2018 / 03:22 pm (ACI Prensa).- The pastoral center of the Diocese of Matagalpa in central Nicaragua, whose bishop is currently in Rome to inform the pope of the situation in his country, was attacked by men armed with machetes on Tuesday.

Two months of protests against Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega have resulted in more than 200 deaths.

The priests of the Matagalpa diocese stated that around noon on June 26 “our Charterhouse Diocesan Pastoral Center was raided by a group of masked men armed with machetes.”

The priests indicated that the assailants “stormed into the center,” took away valuables, and damaged the furniture and the infrastructure. They also threatened the guard.

The priests expressed their sadness “for this desecration of a sacred place dedicated to evangelization and spirituality.” They also condemned the lack of respect for members of the Church and its goods.

“This shameful act is an affront to the person of our pastor Bishop Rolando Álvarez who is on his consultative trip to Rome, and to our parishioners,” the priests said, asking the authorities to find those responsible.

The clergy of the Matagalpa diocese renewed their “urgent call for peace, the end of the violence, and we strongly support the strengthening of the national dialogue in order to come to and honor a national accord for peace and justice. Let’s keep our sanity and respect for others. Let us pray untiringly to the Lord.”

The country’s bishops have mediated on-again, off-again peace talks between the government and opposition groups, and were quick to acknowledge the protesters’ complaints. Bishops and priests across Nicaragua have worked to separate protesters and security forces, and have been threatened and shot.

Bishop Álvarez is currently in Rome together with Cardinal Leopoldo José Brenes Solorzano of Managua to brief Pope Francis on the state of affairs in Nicaragua.

He wrote on Twitter June 27 that “As soon as I arrived in Rome, I was informed of the lamentable events that took place at the Charterhouse Pastoral Center. They achieved their objective. Already I knew. This was obviously directed. This is the reality Nicaragua is going through.”

“Apenas he llegado a Roma, me informan los lamentables acontecimientos acontecidos en el Centro Pastoral de la Cartuja. Cumplieron su objetivo. Ya lo supe. Obviamente ésto fue dirigido. Esta es la realidad que vive Nicaragua”. Mons. Rolando José.

— Monseñor Rolando José Alvarez L. (@DiocesisdeMat) June 27, 2018

Bishop Álvarez has been outspoken in favor of the opposition; he exhorted Nicaraguans during his June 10 homily to join “the immense majority” of the population which is asking for an urgent change in the country since “Nicaragua can no longer tolerate this.”

He has also said, “We hope there would be a series of electoral reforms, structural changes to the electoral authority – free, just and transparent elections, international observation without conditions … Effectively the democratization of the country.”

Fr. Vicente Martínez Bermúdez, a priest of the Diocese of Matagalpa, has reported that over the weekend he was detained by a group of 20 hooded men and threatened with death. Another priest of the Matagalpa diocese was wounded by shrapnel May 15 while trying to separate protesters and security forces, the AP reported.

Protests began April 18 after 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.

Barricades and roadblocks are now found throughout the country, and clashes frequently turn lethal.

Peace talks resumed June 25 under the Church’s mediation.

But the day prior, the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights charged that Matagalpa, as well as Diriamba, Managua, Masaya, Nagarote, and Tipitapa were attacked by “combined forces” made up of regular police, riot police, paramilitaries, and pro-government vigilantes.

The Nicaraguan government has suggested that protestors are killing their own supporters so as to destabilize Ortega’s administration.

The pension reforms which triggered the unrest were modest, but protests quickly turned to Ortega’s authoritarian bent.

Ortega has shown resistance to calls for elections, which are not scheduled until 2021, to be held early.

Ortega has been president of Nicaragua since 2007, and oversaw the abolition of presidential term limits in 2014.

He was a leader in the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which had ousted the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and fought US-backed right-wing counterrevolutionaries during the 1980s. Ortega was also leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990.

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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