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ACI Prensa Staff, May 18, 2023 / 15:45 pm The Nicaraguan Ministry of the Interior (Migob) announced in official media the “voluntary dissolution” of the Immaculate Conception Catholic University of the Archdiocese of Managua (UCICAM), which functioned as a formation center for seminarians from the Nicaraguan capital. According to ministerial agreement 77-2023-OSFL, published May 18 in La Gaceta, the regime’s official newspaper, the minister of the interior, María Amelia Coronel Kinloch, approved “by voluntary dissolution agreed by its members … the cancellation of legal personality” of the UCICAM. The dictatorship pointed out that the university, registered in the public records...

ACI Prensa Staff, Apr 11, 2023 / 04:00 am Father Donaciano Alarcón, a Claretian missionary expelled from Nicaragua by the dictatorship, described how the authorities leveled unfounded accusations against him, took him to the border with Honduras, and abandoned him to his fate. “They put me in a patrol car with two police officers and took me to the border. They made me cross and told me that I was now outside of the country and I couldn’t return anymore,” Alarcón told Radio Hogar of the Archdiocese of Panama. Currently, the Panamanian priest is safe in the city of San...

An anonymous letter has made waves in Nicaragua, after it accused the country’s cardinal of being too close to the country’s dictator, President Daniel Ortega. While persecution against the Church in Nicaragua continues unabated, a debate has cropped up among clergy in the country about the controversial, anonymous letter, reportedly written by seminarians, which accuses Managua Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes of fostering a culture of silence in the country’s seminary about ongoing religious persecution. The letter, published March 28 by Spanish Catholic outlet Religión Digital and reportedly written by three current and former seminarians, also claimed that the Nicaraguan dictatorship has...

ACI Prensa Staff, Apr 5, 2023 / 15:20 pm The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, hasn’t declared a truce in its persecution of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, not even during Holy Week. Félix Maradiaga, a former political prisoner and also a former presidential candidate who was deported to the United States, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, that the dictatorship expelled Panamanian priest Father Donaciano Alarcón from the country on Monday of Holy Week. “They took him over the Honduran border. His ‘crime’ was that at Mass he prayed for the release...

The Catholic Church has been an enduring symbol of Nicaragua’s resistance to the regime of President Daniel Ortega since 2018. Consequently, the institution’s peaceful defiance has firmly placed church leaders and the faithful in Ortega’s crosshairs. Tensions escalated between the Catholic Church and Ortega on March 18, when the Vatican closed its embassy in Managua. Earlier that week, Ortega had lashed out at Pope Francis, who compared the president’s administration to a Nazi dictatorship during an interview with Argentine news organization Infobae. Ortega denounced Catholic leaders sympathetic to the opposition as “terrorists” and called the Catholic Church a “mafia.” The...

ACI Prensa Staff, Mar 28, 2023 / 09:15 am The auxiliary bishop of Managua, Silvio Báez, who lives in exile in the United States, called the Daniel Ortega dictatorship’s staging this weekend of a prison interview with Bishop Rolando Álvarez “repugnant and cynical.” Álvarez was sentenced to 26 years and four months in prison on Feb. 10 as a “traitor to the homeland.” El 19 Digital, a news outlet supportive of the dictatorship, released over the weekend photos and a video of Álvarez, the bishop of Matagalpa, who was visited by a brother and sister on March 25 in the...

At the trial of "Proud Boys" in connection with January 6th an FBI informant testified for the defense today. The informant says he knew of no plan to enter the US Capitol that day and his message to an FBI handler on January 6th stated: "The crowd did as herd mentality. Not organized"... An Israeli airstrike tonight in the Damascus area of Syria... French trade union leaders will meet France's Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne next Wednesday... Nicaraguan officials in Moscow today discussing military cooperation with Russia... The Press Secretary for Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs resigning after a social media posting...

Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega has continued his fierce assault on the Catholic Church, shuttering two important Catholic universities and appropriating their assets. In the official government newspaper La Gaceta, the Ministry of the Interior published Tuesday the annulment of the legal status of the Juan Pablo II University, based in Managua and four other cities, and the Autonomous Christian University of Nicaragua (UCAN), based in León and five other cities. The authorities of the two now defunct Catholic universities are required to deliver to the government of Daniel Ortega their databases containing all information on their students as well as...

ACI Prensa Staff, Feb 28, 2023 / 14:30 pm The Nicaraguan dictatorship led by Daniel Ortega has prohibited holding the Stations of the Cross in the streets the same week that the dictator accused the Church of being a “mafia.” Local media reported Feb. 23 and 24 that the government had banned the Stations of the Cross, a traditional practice during Lent and Holy Week. According to the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa, Father Winder Morales of the Diocese of Granada said that “the Stations of the Cross that we traditionally do on Fridays of Lent can only make its way...

Nicaragua’s government strips 94 people of their Nicaraguan citizenship, including an Auxiliary Bishop of Managua who is already in exile in Miami, and a Catholic priest.The 94 Nicaraguans who have had their citizenship removed are added to the 222 recently deported to the United States. This latest group includes Bishop Silvo Jose Baez, Auxiliary Bishop of Managua, and Father Uriel Vallejos, a priest from Matagalpa. Some of those affected by the loss of citizenship are already living in exile abroad. Appeals Court Judge Ernesto Rodriguez accuses them of being fugitives from justices and traitors to the fatherland. Their property has...

On 23 February, Israel joined 140 other UN member states voting in favor of a nonbinding resolution that calls for Russia to end hostilities in Ukraine and withdraw its forces.“For the past year, Israel has stood alongside the people of Ukraine in solidarity both on the ground and here in the UN,” Tel Aviv’s UN envoy Gilad Erdan said following the vote. The resolution, drafted by Ukraine in consultation with its western allies, passed 141-7, with 32 abstentions. Belarus, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, North Korea, Eritrea, and Mali were the only member states to vote against the resolution.Israel’s condemnation of Russia’s...

Among those declared "traitors to the fatherland" are award-winning writer Sergio Ramírez, poet Gioconda Belli and Catholic bishop Silvio Báez. All 94 are outspoken critics of President Daniel Ortega, who is in his fourth consecutive term in office. They are the second group of government critics to have their citizenship revoked after 222 government critics had theirs rescinded last week. Many of those on the list of 94 are living abroad. The judge described them as "fugitives from justice" even though many of them left Nicaragua before any charges were levelled against them. Other stripped of their nationality on Wednesday...

CNA Newsroom, Feb 7, 2023 / 14:50 pm In a new attack on the Catholic Church, the Nicaraguan dictatorship led by President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, sentenced three priests, a deacon, two seminarians, and a layman from the Diocese of Matagalpa to 10 years in prison. According to reports from the local newspaper La Prensa and the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH), the sentence was issued on Feb. 6 by Judge Nadia Tardencilla of the Second Criminal Trial District. The sentence consists of five years for the crime of “conspiracy to undermine national security...

A day after banishing most of its political prisoners to the United States, Nicaragua has sentenced a Catholic bishop to 26 years in prison. Bishop Rolando Álvarez refused to leave with the rest of the 222 political prisoners flown to the U.S. on Thursday. According to media reports, he stopped at the stairs leading to the airplane and said, "Let the others be free. I will endure their punishment." Álvarez was arrested for opposing the government of President Daniel Ortega and his trial was set for next week. The bishop has called for free elections. Instead, a judge appeared on...

A Roman Catholic bishop in Nicaragua stripped of his citizenship and sentenced to 26 years in prison... "We will see the most serious conflicts in the next five or six months" Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic discussing the situation involving Ukraine and Russia... The London Times reporting that Ukraine will use new British weapons to attack Crimea... Speaking in Washington a US Defense Department official says that Ukraine can go ahead with attacks on Crimea... The Mayor of Toronto, John Tory, resigning tonight... In Ethiopia authorities blocking internet access amidst a call for mass protest this weekend... Tonight in Liverpool, England...

More than 200 political prisoners were released by Nicaragua this morning. The 222 prisoners were put on an early morning flight to Washington and will arrive in the next few hours. On state television a judge said the government had decided to "deport" the prisoners, saying they had been declared traitors and can never again serve public office. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said Nicaragua made the decision "unilaterally," but that the United States had "facilitated the transportation" and the political prisoners would be admitted into the United States for "humanitarian reasons." Ever since anti-government protests erupted in Nicaragua in...

The Biden administration has rolled back sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela in a disastrous move being heavily criticized by Hispanic voters here in the United States—many of whom are in the U.S. because they or their families fled the socialist regimes. President Joe Biden's administration mobilized Tuesday to ease economic sanctions against oil-rich Venezuela just one day after lifting several Trump-era financial, travel, and migration regulations for fellow socialist state Cuba, whose repressive government notoriously cracked down on the pro-democracy protests in 2021. This week's events are being seen as a soft-on-socialism downslide in U.S. foreign policy that's dealing a...

<p>Ana Belen Montes, a former high-ranking Cuba analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, was released from prison Friday after more than 20 years behind bars at a federal prison in Texas.</p><p>Montes, 65, was released early after pleading guilty to conspiring to commit espionage as part of a plea deal in 2002.</p>

The Biden administration, desperate to mute headlines about record illegal immigrant crossings, has secretly started a new system to let in potential lawbreakers that also puts them on a fast track to legal status. The program amounts to an amnesty ticket and preselects some of those caught up in Mexico’s immigration controls. Word of the program has spread like wildfire, swamping border camps involved in the program, according to a report by immigration expert Todd Bensman with the Center for Immigration Studies. In his report, shared with Secrets Monday, Bensman said, “Thousands are hearing about this new legal way in...

Mexico arrested Amer Haykel, a British man of Arab extraction, sought by US authorities in connection with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the Attorney General's office (PGR) said on Tuesday. Haykel was arrested in Todo Santos, a town in the northeastern Mexican state of Baja California, officials said. "The PGR arrested... Haykel, whom US authorities have linked to extremist groups presumably involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York," the office said in a statement. Officials said Haykel was arrested at the Todo Santos fire department, following "investigative and intelligence work and...