Bianca Jagger has released a film in which she implores Pope Francis to speak out about the persecution of the Catholic Church in her native Nicaragua.
Ms Jagger, a human rights defender, said in the film that bishops, priests and nuns have been targeted in an “unholy war” by Marxist President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosarillo Murillo.
She said she is particularly concerned about the treatment of Bishop Rolando José Álvarez of Matagalpa, an outspoken critic of human rights abuses of the regime, who has spent more than three months in captivity and was recently hurt in a fall.
Catholic leaders in Nicaragua and some around the world, including the Pope, have not condemned the persecution with sufficient vigour, suggests Ms Jagger, founder and president of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation.
“I would like one more time to make an appeal to His Holiness Pope Francis and ask him why, Your Holiness, you have not spoken about Bishop Álvarez and the priests who are in jail?” she said in the film.
“Why not about the Nicaraguan prisoners who are being tortured? Why not pray for us people of Nicaragua and for the Catholic Church that is victim of the tyrant Daniel Ortega?”
It was revealed earlier this month that Ortega had stepped up his persecution of the Catholic Church by arresting a 64-year-old chronically-ill priest and imprisoning him practically naked.
Police kicked in the doors of a presbytery of a church in Managua, the capital of the central American country, and dragged out Fr Enrique Martínez Gamboa.
As they bundled the priest into a waiting van, he was heard to shout: “They are taking me by force!” and: “Viva el Cristo Rey (long live Christ the King)!”
No warrant was produced and the boot-prints of the police were visible on the broken doors of the property after the raid.
Fr Martínez was the 11<sup>th</sup> priest to be arrested and taken to jail in just the last six months as President Ortega has intensified his crack down on the Church and independent media as part of his struggle to consolidate his hold on power.
The regime has announced that three priests, a deacon, a seminarian and a photo-journalist – all arrested with Bishop Álvarez in August – will stand trial from December 1 in connection with crimes against the state.
It has also prevented two Nicaraguan priests from re-entering the country following a short period abroad.
Fr Guillermo Blandón, parish priest of the Church of Santa Lucía de Boaco, was refused entry at a Miami airport after returning from a trip to Israel.
The regime then denied Fr Deyvis López, parish priest of the St Gregory the Great Church, from returning to Nicaragua following a 15-day visit to the United States.
