-
Dec 1, 2024 | 
thetablet.co.uk | Patrick Hudson |Ellen Teague |Francis McDonagh
The Nicaraguan national assembly unanimously approved constitutional reforms proposed by President Daniel Ortega at their first reading. These would modify 100 articles of the constitution, extending the presidential term from five to six years and introduce the role of “co-president”, effectively confirming the position of Ortega’s wife and vice-president Rosario Murillo.
-
Oct 30, 2024 | 
thetablet.co.uk | Francis McDonagh
A ‘mestizo’ of Hispanic and Quechua Indian descent, the Peruvian priest known as ‘the father of liberation theology’
also co-authored a book with Cardinal Gerhard Müller
Get Instant Access
Register for free to read this article in full
Subscribe for unlimited access
From just £30 quarterly
Complete access to all Tablet website content including all premium content.
-
Oct 21, 2024 | 
thetablet.co.uk | Francis McDonagh |Bess Twiston Davies
A priest celebrated for advocating indigenous rights and campaigning against drug cartels was killed in Mexico. Fr Marcelo Pérez Pérez had just celebrated a 7am Sunday Mass on 20 October in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, in the southern state of Chiapas, when two men on a motorcycle approached his car. They shot him – eight times according to some reports – through the car window.
-
Sep 9, 2024 | 
thetablet.co.uk | Francis McDonagh
The Nicaraguan government released 135 prisoners and sent them to Guatemala. It emerged that the release on 5 September was negotiated by the United States. The Guatemalan government has said that it would support the Nicaraguans while they planned their transit to third countries. In a statement, the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said: “Today, the United States secured the release on humanitarian grounds of 135 political prisoners unjustly detained by Nicaraguan authorities.
-
Sep 5, 2024 | 
thetablet.co.uk | Francis McDonagh
The Nicaraguan interior ministry summoned a number of foreign priests and religious sisters to meeting where they were threatened with arrest or expulsion from the country if they made public complaints of attacks on the Church. The meetings on 20-21 August were described as intimidatory, with the participants threatened with expulsion of they did not attend. It came amid intensified bureaucratic and legal pressures on Churches and NGOs throughout the month.
-
Aug 7, 2024 | 
thetablet.co.uk | Francis McDonagh
The Nicaraguan authorities arrested eleven priests and a deacon over the past fortnight. Reports said most of the arrests were in the Diocese of Matagalpa, formerly headed by Bishop Rolando Álvarez until his arrest in August 2022 and exile to Rome in January this year. The administrator of the neighbouring Diocese of Estelí, the 80-year-old Fr Frutos Valle, was ordered not to carry out the planned ordination of three deacons.
-
Jun 24, 2024 | 
thetablet.co.uk | Francis McDonagh
Archbishop Mario Iceta of Burgos issued a decree excommunicating 10 Poor Clares from the Belorado convent who had signed a fax denying the authority of the ecclesial tribunal to which he had summoned them. Their excommunication on Saturday 22 June followed their refusal to attend the tribunal on Friday. The nuns rejected the summons and reaffirmed their decision to leave the “conciliar Church” announced earlier this month.
-
May 22, 2024 | 
thetablet.co.uk | Francis McDonagh |Bess Twiston Davies
A community of Poor Clares in northern Spain declared that they were leaving the Catholic Church and did not recognise any pope after Pius XII as legitimate. The nuns from a monastery in Belorado, near Burgos, said they were under the patronage of Pablo de Rojas Sánchez-Franco, a self-styled bishop excommunicated in 2019 and known for his fascist sympathies. Local bishops expressed surprise at the announcement and said they had not received any official communication from the community.
-
Apr 8, 2024 | 
thetablet.co.uk | Francis McDonagh |Marko Phiri
Some of the Nicaraguan clergy expelled to Rome in January are to be resettled in Spain and Costa Rica. After months of silence one of the bishops expelled, Isodoro Moro, bishop of Siuna, is to join the diocese of Granada in Spain. Also to be based in Granada are Fr Héctor Treminio, former treasurer of the diocese of Managua, and Fr Marcos Díaz, who was vicar general of the diocese of León.
-
Feb 20, 2024 | 
thetablet.co.uk | Francis McDonagh
A priest charged with supporting an attempted coup in Brazil last January is a specialist in bioethics who has represented the country’s bishops in legal debates. Fr José Eduardo de Oliveira e Silva, from Osasco in greater São Paulo, faces investigation for his alleged role in attempts to undermine the results of the 2022 presidential election which saw Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva defeat the incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.
