EWTN News reports that Brooklyn Rivera, an Indigenous leader and political prisoner held incommunicado for over 970 days by the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship in Nicaragua, has died at age 73. The regime claims his death resulted from a bacterial infection following COVID-19, but family members and international observers denounce this as a state murder. Rivera’s daughter categorically rejected the regime’s statements, noting her father was in “optimal health” at the time of his detention and that the family was denied any independent access to him. The U.N. has documented over 112 cases of enforced disappearance in Nicaragua, with several prisoners dying under torture. While exiled Bishop Silvio Báez offered vague Trinitarian reflections about dictators being “far from God,” the article reveals the complete impotence—and complicity—of the post-conciliar Church in confronting real persecution and defending the rights of Christ the King over nations.
The Anatomy of a State Murder
The death of Brooklyn Rivera Bryan is not a tragedy but an execution—cold, calculated, and deliberate. For 970 days, this Miskito Indigenous leader was held incommunicado, denied family visits, denied independent medical verification, and ultimately denied life itself by the Ortega-Murillo regime. The Nicaraguan Ministry of Health’s communiqué, published in the regime-aligned outlet El 19 Digital, speaks of “enormous and intense medical efforts” to save him—a grotesque fiction that collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. Rivera was in “optimal health” at the time of his abduction, as his daughter Tininiska Rivera explicitly stated. The deterioration was not natural; it was manufactured.
The regime’s playbook is identical to that documented in Cuba, Venezuela, and every other Godless dictatorship: “They enter alive and leave dead,” as Arturo McFields Yescas, Nicaragua’s former ambassador to the Organization of American States, stated on social media. This is not hyperbole; it is the documented pattern of totalitarian regimes that wage war against all who oppose their absolute dominion. The U.N. experts gathered in Geneva on May 1 confirmed “deep concern” regarding missing persons who reportedly died while in the dictatorship’s custody after being tortured. More than 112 victims of enforced disappearance have been documented, with the regime providing no response to notifications.
The crime here is not merely against Brooklyn Rivera as an individual but against the natural law, against the common good, and against the social reign of Christ the King, which demands that rulers govern justly and recognize the inherent dignity of every human person as created in the image and likeness of God.
The Neo-Church’s Trinitarian Evasion
While a man lay dying in a Nicaraguan prison, the exiled auxiliary bishop of Managua, Silvio Báez, offered the faithful not a prophetic denunciation of tyranny but a homily on the Most Holy Trinity. His words, delivered at St. Agatha Parish in Miami on May 31, are a masterclass in post-conciliar evasion: “In contemplating the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, a mystery of love, unity, and freedom, we grasp just how far removed from God are the cruelty and cynicism of dictators who, no matter how much they invoke his name, exude hatred, multiply human victims, and seek to deify themselves by means of violence and repression.”
This is precisely the kind of vacuous, spiritually bankrupt rhetoric that characterizes the neo-church’s engagement with the world. Note what Báez does not say: he does not name Ortega and Murillo as criminals. He does not declare that their regime is illegitimate. He does not invoke the Church’s social teaching on the right of the faithful to resist unjust governments. He does not quote Saint Thomas Aquinas on tyrannicide or the Church’s own doctrine on the limits of civil obedience. He offers instead a vague meditation on Trinitarian love—as if the murder of political prisoners could be addressed by theological abstractions.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, was unambiguous: “The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” And further: “If rulers and legitimate superiors will have the conviction that they exercise authority not so much by their own right as by the command and in the place of the Divine King, everyone will notice how religiously and wisely they will use their authority.” The Ortega regime exercises authority by no right at all—neither divine nor natural. It is a criminal enterprise masquerading as a government.
Báez’s concluding remarks are even more revealing: “Faith in the Trinity compels us to reject the logic of division, polarization, contempt for diversity, and the exclusion of minorities.” This is the language of modernist indifferentism, the very spirit condemned by Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis as the synthesis of all errors. The bishop transforms the Faith into a program of liberal pluralism—”diversity,” “inclusion”—rather than the uncompromising proclamation of Christ’s universal kingship over all nations and all aspects of human life.
The Silence About What Matters Most
The EWTN article, while reporting facts about Rivera’s death, commits the gravest omission possible: it says nothing about the state of Rivera’s soul, the possibility of his receiving last rites, or the spiritual condition of Nicaragua under persecution. This silence is not accidental; it is structural. The post-conciliar Church has systematically abandoned the supernatural order in favor of naturalistic humanitarianism.
Father Edwing Román, quoted in the article, denounces “crimes against humanity” but frames the response in purely naturalistic terms: “The Nicaraguan people deserve freedom, justice, and dignity.” These are fine words, but they are incomplete without the crucial addition: and the right to practice their Catholic faith freely, to have true priests who offer the Most Holy Sacrifice, and to live under laws consonant with the natural and divine law. The Church’s social teaching, as articulated by Leo XIII in Immortale Dei and Pius XI in Quas Primas, demands not merely “freedom” in the abstract but specifically the freedom to obey God rather than men.
The article mentions that the dictatorship has persecuted the Church, closed universities, and stripped people of citizenship. But it does not ask the decisive question: Is the Catholic Church in Nicaragua—the true Church, not the conciliar sect—capable of resisting this persecution? The answer, given the near-total capitulation of the post-conciliar hierarchy to every form of tyranny and modernism, is deeply troubling.
The International Community’s Complicity
The U.N. experts expressed “deep concern.” The international community “must act,” says Father Román. But the international community—the same community that promotes abortion, gender ideology, and religious indifferentism—is not a reliable ally of the Catholic Church. Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, condemned the very foundations of modern internationalism:
– Error 39: “The State, as being the origin and source of all rights, is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits.”
– Error 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.”
– Error 80: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.”
The “international community” is, in its current configuration, an instrument of the very forces that persecute the Church. To appeal to it for justice is to appeal to the wolf for protection of the sheep. The only true justice comes from God, and the only true advocate for the oppressed is the Church acting in her full authority—not the emasculated, modernist conciliar structure that has surrendered to the world.
The Duty of Catholics: Not Dialogue but Resistance
The post-conciliar Church preaches “dialogue” with dictatorships. The true Church teaches that there can be no dialogue with evil, only its condemnation and, when necessary, active resistance. Saint Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu, condemned the modernist proposition that “the Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (Error 57) and that “truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (Error 58). These errors are alive and well in the neo-church’s approach to political tyranny.
Brooklyn Rivera’s death is not merely a political event; it is a spiritual catastrophe. A man created in the image of God was tortured and killed by a regime that claims to govern in the name of the people while murdering those same people. The response of Catholics cannot be vague Trinitarian meditations or appeals to the United Nations. It must be the uncompromising proclamation that Christ is King, that His law is supreme, and that every ruler who violates that law acts without authority and must be resisted.
Pius XI declared: “His reign extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church… but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The Ortega regime, by persecuting the Church, torturing prisoners, and murdering Indigenous leaders, has placed itself outside the law of Christ the King. It is the duty of every Catholic to recognize this reality and to work—by prayer, by sacrifice, and by all legitimate means—for the restoration of Christ’s social reign in Nicaragua and throughout the world.
The neo-church will continue to offer platitudes. The true Church must offer the Cross.
Source:
Victim of dictatorship, Nicaraguan Indigenous leader and political prisoner dies (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 02.06.2026