Nils de Jesús Hernández, 56, has lived in the United States for 36 years, far from his native Nicaragua. Forced to leave the country in 1988 in the midst of the civil war, he serves a parish in Iowa where he ministers to the Hispanic community and speaks out for the Nicaraguan people.
Hernández, known as the “vandal priest” for having led a student strike and supporting the 2018 protests in Nicaragua, is now the parish priest at Queen of Peace Church in Waterloo, Iowa, in the Archdiocese of Dubuque. “Vandal priest” was the defamatory, derisive label the dictatorship gave to him for his role in the protests, but the title has now turned into a sort of badge of honour.
After being declared a target of the government at the age of 19 when he was a candidate for the priesthood, Hernández said in an interview with “EWTN Noticias,” the Spanish-language broadcast edition of EWTN News, that leaving the country “meant that I was never going to return to Nicaragua. Leaving my parents, my family, everything that was familiar to me: my language, my culture, my food, everything; that is, everything that is one’s own … that was the cruelest thing I was experiencing.” The priest said he inherited his fighting spirit from his mother, who also helped with the student protests at the time.
“I believe that the persecution against the Church in Nicaragua is becoming much more aggressive, with confiscations [of Church property] that they have carried out and continue to carry out,” the priest lamented. According to Hernández, the dictatorship wants to “eradicate the Church.”
“But I always say the following: They will steal all the buildings, they can close all the churches they want to close … but they cannot take away the faith from the hearts of every Nicaraguan, because wherever there is a Nicaraguan in Nicaragua, even though they are being repressed and oppressed, there is the Catholic faith, because all of us Nicaraguans are devoted to Mary and we trust in the will of God.”
“We also have great faith that the Lord will prevail and will be victorious, because the Lord triumphed on the cross and overcame death with his resurrection,” he said. “We will be returning to Nicaragua triumphantly, because we will indeed return to Nicaragua, because this dictatorship will not last forever. They’re old and they’re not going to continue [in power] for all eternity,” he predicted.
