Ortega regime forces Fray Domingo Pepe to leave Nicaragua

The priest of the Orders of Friars Minor, of Italian origin, Fray Domingo Pepe had to leave Nicaragua, after the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo canceled his residency. He was living in the municipality of Río Blanco, Matagalpa, where he was already retired.

“They had already taken away his residency and they gave him time to leave and yesterday he left Río Blanco,” commented a parishioner.

Fray Domingo Pepe is about to turn 84 years old. He was born in Napoles, Italy, on August 13, 1939 and arrived as a parish priest in the municipality of Matiguas, Matagalpa, from where he went on a mission to Río Blanco in July 1970. This territory was not yet a municipality, since it was created as such in 1974.

Pepe served as parish priest in the Nuestra Señora del Carmen Parish, whose temple he helped rebuild with his own hands.

Pepe was also in charge, in 1989, of the construction of the San Francisco de Asís chapel in the same municipality of Río Blanco, which was established as a parish in October 2018 by the bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, Monsignor Rolando Alvarez. Today, Alvarez is one of the political prisoners of the Ortega-Murillo regime having already been a year in captivity.  

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When he established the San Francisco de Asís Parish in the Diocese, Monsignor Alvarez said that Fray Domingo is part of the historical memory of Rio Blanco and was one of its founders.

There are many social projects undertaken by Fray Domingo Pepe in Río Blanco, where the residents have expressed their love for him through multiple acts.The municipal government declared him a beloved son of Río Blanco and the youth of the municipality have dedicated baseball, volleyball and other sports tournaments to him.

In 2004, the municipal government headed by Mayor Denis Argueta dedicated a Fray Domingo Pepe Pedestrian Street.

*Text originally published by Mosaico CSI

This article was originally published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by our Havana Times.