Monday 15 September 2008
 
By Eva-Maria Kohlmann
 
Bishop Jorge Solórzano of Matagalpa has warned that the Church schools in Nicaragua may be threatened with closure in the near future. The state has announced its intention of cutting its subsidies, with the result that school fees must inevitably increase to make up the shortfall. This would mean that many families could no longer afford to send their children to Catholic schools resulting in the possible closure of many schools.

The bishop was on a visit last week to the headquarters of the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) together with three other bishops from Nicaragua, including the president of the Nicaraguan bishops conference, Archbishop Leopoldo Brenes. It was the first time that so many Nicaraguan bishops - half of the country's bishops in fact - had come to visit ACN together. For ACN Nicaragua is one of the priority countries in Central America.

Bishop Solórzano went on to remark that, while the relationship between the state and the Church is amicable on the surface, there are nonetheless a number of underlying negative tendencies - such as this cutting of state subsidies - which will also affect many other Church institutions, such as hospitals for example. Additionally, the state expects the Church to support its political policies. "But as the Church, we must fulfil our mission without compromise", Bishop Solorzano pointed out.

The four bishops were united in telling ACN that the greatest challenges facing the Church in Nicaragua include the battle against poverty in a country that ranks as the second poorest in Latin America and is subject to repeated natural disasters, the deeper evangelisation of the people and the protection of unborn life.

Archbishop Brenes, the president of the bishops' conference, pointed out that in the battle against abortion, women have a crucial role, so that the Church is especially committed to reaching out pastorally to women in the parishes.

"Women have rights", he said, "but children also have rights". It was above all important, he said, to combat the notion of "therapeutic abortion" on presumed medical grounds, since this would lead to a kind of creeping legalisation of abortion.

Bishop Solorzano added that there is massive pressure on the part of international organisations and the industrial nations to legalise abortion, but the people of Nicaragua are "a people who love life". The Church is committed at every level to the protection of life, he said, including in the schools and parishes.

In Nicaragua abortion is still illegal, making it the country with the strictest abortion laws in Latin America.

[ACN]