The reasons behind the arrest of the priests still remain unknown.
A source told the newspaper La Prensa that the arrests were not made by the police but by armed individuals traveling in Toyota Hilux pickup trucks. The source said: “We have no information about their whereabouts, but we believe that they were transferred to Managua.”
Nicaraguan researcher and lawyer Martha Patricia Molina charged Oct. 2 on Facebook that “paramilitaries and police began an intimidation and kidnapping operation against the priests and parishioners.”
“There are three kidnapped priests. At least five were ‘visited,’ taken away, threatened, and returned. In the Diocese of León there was also intimidation from the police,” Molina wrote.
According to the lawyer, the three arrested priests were “clear in their homilies,” since they constantly addressed “the themes of the Gospel, above all, the injustices that are experienced daily.”
Upon hearing the news, the exiled auxiliary bishop of Managua, Silvio José Báez, denounced on X the “ferocious persecution against the Catholic Church” by the “Sandinista dictatorship of Daniel Ortega.”