Authorities in the city of León, Nicaragua, chose an unusual place for setting up a boxing ring and staging prize fights: the courtyard of the local cathedral.
They even scheduled the matches for 19th April-just as Bishop René Sándigo of León was celebrating his birthday. “The boxing ring was a dismal gift that the dictatorship sent to Monsignor René Sándigo on his birthday. The dictators didn’t even respect that. Criminal, vulgar and temple-profaning dictatorship,” Martha Patrica Molina, a Nicaraguan lawyer who documents hostilities against the Catholic Church, posted on X, on 20th April.
“The Sandinista dictatorship orders the mayors’ offices to use the atriums of parishes to carry out pagan activities and thus desecrate churches,” she said in another post.
“Masses have had to be suspended in some churches” due to noise, Molina said. The staging of spectacles outside of places of worship escalates the repression against Catholics in Nicaragua, where regime of
President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, have branded priests and bishops as “terrorists” and “coup mongers,” while curtailing public demonstrations of faith — such as processions and patron saint celebrations.
Picture: People are pictured in a file photo taking part in a celebration outside the Cathedral of the Assumption in Leon, Nicaragua. (OSV News photo/Oswaldo Rivas, Reuters)