When Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes heard that paramilitaries had surrounded a basilica in the city of Diriamba, he dropped everything and rushed there. Masked men seemingly working for the government had trapped protesters inside and the cardinal feared a massacre. More than 300 people have been killed in Nicaragua since April, when the state announced pension reforms and benefits cuts. The Church’s direct intervention has helped to save hundreds of lives.
Accompanied by the country’s Polish nuncio, Archbishop Waldemar Stanisław Sommertag, and Auxiliary Bishop Silvio José Báez, Cardinal Brenes tried to free those inside St Sebastian Basilica. The three prelates were pushed around as onlookers derided them as “murderers” (state media have portrayed demonstrators as “terrorists” and the Church as an accomplice). Bishop Báez later tweeted a photo of a gash on his arm. “I was injured, punched in the stomach, they took my episcopal symbols away from me, and verbally attacked me,” he wrote. But the trio did eventually free the protesters.
