Priest expelled from Nicaragua during Holy Week

Father Donaciano Alarcón, a Claretian missionary expelled from Nicaragua by the dictatorship, described how the authorities leveled unfounded accusations against him, took him to the border with Honduras, and abandoned him to his fate.

“They put me in a patrol car with two police officers and took me to the border. They made me cross and told me that I was now outside of the country and I couldn’t return anymore,” Alarcón told Radio Hogar of the Archdiocese of Panama.

The Claretian priest assured that he has never talked “about politics” because he has no interest in it, but “I don’t hold back from talking about the issue of justice at Mass on Sundays.”

The Panamanian priest denied some accounts that say he was expelled for holding an outdoor procession or Stations of the Cross, expressions of popular piety prohibited by the Daniel Ortega dictatorship in February of this year.

“I didn’t do a procession because they were prohibited and I was the first to tell people that they would not take place,” he said.