Young people, on the other hand, "feel like it is their turn, to take up the mantle of their parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, to fight for a better future for Nicaragua."
Bishop Silvio José Baez Ortega, Auxiliary Bishop of Managua, thanked a group of some 2,000 students gathered in the Managua cathedral April 21 for being "the moral reservoir" of the Church and assured them of the Church's support for their cause. "You have woken the nation up," he said.
Fr. Víctor Rivas Bustamante, from the Nicaragua bishops' conference, told Vatican News that the local bishops are "working to recover the concerns and demands of young people and of different social sectors, to lay out to the government what is being demanded so that the government can act and change its position."
The problem is no longer just welfare reform, but "other issues: there is talk of democracy, freedom of expression, and many other things," Bustamante said.
Ortega has been president of Nicaragua since 2007, and oversaw the abolition of presidential term limits in 2014. His wife, Rosario Murillo, is also his vice president.
He was a leader in the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which had ousted the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and fought US-backed right-wing counterrevolutionaries during the 1980s. Ortega was also leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1985 as coordinator of the Junta of National Reconstruction, and from 1985 to 1990 as president.
Elise Harris was senior Rome correspondent for CNA from 2012 to 2018.
Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency's senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.