Priest from Nicaragua to bring immigrant experience to role as US bishop

This week, the US Catholic Bishops Conference is marking their annual Religious Freedom Week, reminding people of the importance of this basic human right and highlighting some areas that need special attention and prayers.

One of those areas is Nicaragua. The bishops have set June 25 as a day of prayer for the Central American country, which has seen a sharp rise in the persecution of the Church in recent years.

One of Pope Leo XIV’s first acts since becoming pope May 8 was to appoint Father Pedro Bismarck Chau, a native of Managua, Nicaragua, as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey.

In an upcoming podcast with Aid to the Church in Need USA, Bishop-elect Chau recalls growing up in Nicaragua, where his mother had a strong devotion to the Sacred Heart. Now, providentially, he is rector of Newark’s Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

Bishop-elect Chau, who turns 58 on June 28, speaks in the podcast of his long journey from being an immigrant in Texas, to discerning a vocation, to looking forward to his episcopal ordination on September 8.

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Ordained in 2008, Bishop-elect Chau has worked in parishes, youth ministry, campus ministry and chaplaincy to the deaf. He is fluent in English, Spanish and American Sign Language.

He said that his priesthood “has been just amazing. I mean, ups and downs, but it’s always fulfilling when you go to bed and say, ‘I’m tired, but today was a good day.’”

In 2013, with financial assistance from Aid to the Church in Need USA, he led a group of young people to World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Now, under the leadership of Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, archbishop of Newark, Chau will be the regional bishop for Hudson County, which has 51 parishes and over 200,000 Catholics. He has chosen as his episcopal motto “God is my strength.”

Asked what he might bring to his new role, as a priest born in Nicaragua, he said, “I think I will bring my own experience as immigrant, my own experience of understanding what people have gone through when they come through the border — the fear, the aspirations they come with, having a better understanding of the reasons that people come, why they risk their own lives. I think that understanding could give some support to those brother immigrants.”

Aside from being one of several immigrant priests who have recently been appointed as bishops in the United States, Chau noted that Pope Leo’s choices so far tend to be priests who have had a lot of pastoral experience.

“I think that he’s trying to bring more the pastoral aspect into the bishops,” he suggested, “because we could be more like fathers to the people we will be shepherding.

Praying for Nicaragua

While Bishop Chau will be focused on the people in his New Jersey flock, he has not forgotten his native Nicaragua. He noted that while people are still allowed to attend Mass there, religious processions are banned, and priests must submit their homilies to the local police station before they can deliver them.

In its 2023 Religious Freedom Report (the document is issued every two years), Aid to the Church in Need explained that in 2022, the government of Nicaragua expelled the Apostolic Nuncio, exiled religious and priests, including the Missionaries of Charity, and arrested Bishop Rolando Álvarez of the Diocese of Matagalpa. Bishop Álvarez, an outspoken critic of the government of President Daniel Ortega, was declared guilty of “conspiracy against national integrity and spreading fake news … to the detriment of the State and Nicaraguan society.” He received a 26-year prison sentence, but was later exiled from the country.

Hundreds of attacks on churches have included desecrations, theft, threats, and hate speech. Police deployments around churches have intimidated the faithful. The government nationalized a Catholic university and closed the Bishops’ Conference television station as well as at least eight Catholic radio broadcasters.

Bishop-elect Chau encourages the faithful in the United States to continue praying for Nicaragua.

“I truly believe that what’s happening in Nicaragua, it’s spiritual. It’s spiritual warfare,” he said. “And what I admire of my people in Nicaragua, the country has not fought back with arms, but with prayer. As people of God, we need to support our country with prayer — praying for deliverance, praying for the Lord to really give strength and courage to the priests and the religious who are there, and to the people themselves, to speak the truth always, and to give them the strength.”

Said Bishop Chau, “That’s why I believe and I encourage the people to not lose faith, to continue to pray for the salvation of the souls of the government, of the people ruling the country right now. We need to pray for their conversion and their salvation.”

–By John Burger