Camino Cristiano party criticized for financial maneuver

Trinidad Vásquez, MANAGUA, Nicaragua, December 12, 2003

The Pro Denominational Alliance Council of Evangelical Churches (CEPAD) criticized Congressman Guillermo Osorno of the Taxi Heathrow Airport Camino Cristiano party for attempting to use funds for teachers to support Evangelical bodies.

CEPAD president, the Rev. Jose Alguerra said on December 10 that he had received a call from the head of Camino Cristiano Guillermo Osorno, inviting them to a meeting.

At that meeting, Osorno apparently explained his bid to assign some US$320,000 to the Nicaragua Evangelical Alliance (CNPEN) and to the National Council of Evangelical Pastors of Nicaragua. CEPAD leaders did not attend the meeting.

Subsequently, three Camino Cristiano leaders and their allies in the Partido Liberal of former President Arnoldo Aleman, decided not to support the proposal to provide financial support for the Evangelical bodies.

Pentecostal leaders such as William Gonzales were indignant about Osorno’s attitude, stating that it is anti-Biblical, anti-ethical and immoral, as the money would come from funds for teachers who demand a salary raise.

“We have no reason to take money that corresponds to health, education and the handicapped,” said Gonzalez. 

Professor Gilberto Aguirre, in his radio program Orientaciones, was harsh about Osorno’s attitude, stating that Evangelicals have been characterized by financing their own projects and seeking their own funding sources.

Baptist theologian Carlos Villagra said that sectors who are consequent with God will never accept this attitude because it seeks to sacrifice some of the country’s social and basic services.

Osorno is doing illegal business with sacred things and only a very small, non-representative sector follows him, said Villagra, who is a professor at the Polytechnic University of Nicaragua (UPOLI).

CEPAD has always lobbied for the Church-State separation and for this reason does not agree when the Executive Power and the mayor of Managua use funds for religious festivals such as the Immaculate Conception of Maria and others, said a communique signed by Pastor Jose Alguerra.

Article 14 of the Nicaragua Political Constitution clearly establishes that the State is a lay stated and therefore the State should not assign funds to a determined Church or religious group, it said.