Two Nuns Slain From Ambush in Nicaragua

Gunmen ambushed a car carrying church workers in northeastern Nicaragua and killed two nuns, one an American, church officials said Tuesday. They said an American bishop and a third nun were wounded.

Father Marcelino Estrada said from Bluefields, Nicaragua, that the attack took place Monday night on a highway near Puerto Cabezas in a remote Caribbean coastal region about 200 miles northeast of Managua.

Church officials and family members identified the slain nuns as Maureen Courtney, 45, of Milwaukee and Teresa Rosales, a Nicaraguan. Bishop Paul Schmitz, 46, of Fond du Lac, Wis., the auxiliary bishop of Bluefields, was shot in the arm.

“He has lost a lot of blood,” Estrada said. “(But) he is out of danger.”

Also wounded was a nun identified as Francesca Maria Colomer, Estrada said.

The Nicaraguan Sandinista government blamed U.S.-backed Contras, but the church said it had no information about the attackers.

“We had two sisters killed down there. All those sisters down there are ours,” said an official of the Sisters of St. Agnes in Fond du Lac.

“I just found out, the convent came and told me,” said Frances Courtney, mother of Maureen, in the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa. “They know nothing either. She is dead.”

Frances Courtney, who lives with her husband, Russel, said her daughter had been in Nicaragua for 15 years.

“She was supposed to celebrate her 25th jubilee in the order this December,” the mother said. “She was just a lovely little girl.”

Northeastern Nicaragua is an isolated area with few roads. A stronghold of the Miskito Indians, it has formed an autonomous part of the Contra resistance. Bluefields, Nicaragua’s main Caribbean port, is about 100 miles south of Puerto Cabezas.

Schmitz went to Nicaragua as a missionary in 1972 and was ordained auxiliary bishop in 1984, according to Brother Larry La Cross, a spokesman for the Capuchin Order provincial headquarters in Detroit.

Thomas Quigley, adviser on Latin-American affairs at the Washington-based U.S. Catholic Conference, said he spoke to the provincial superior of the Capuchins in Managua, who gave him this account:

Two carloads of church people, including Bishop Salvador Schlaeffer of Bluefields, and Schmitz, his auxiliary bishop, were headed for a meeting.

“They were going to . . . Puerto Cabezas, to meet with leaders of the Miskito community. They drove from Managua, and left yesterday (Monday) morning. They drove to Siuna en route to Puerto Cabezas.”

Schlaeffer and the people in that car decided not to continue driving that night because it was late.

“Schmitz and the three . . . sisters of Saint Agnes continued on. At about 7 o’clock last night, they were ambushed, and the result is two people killed, two people wounded.”

The official Nicaragua radio said the attackers were “Contra forces encouraged by the invasion of U.S. troops in Panama.” The government did not say why it believes Contras were responsible.

Asked about the government claim that the Contras were the gunmen, Estrada replied, “We have no indication. . . . It doesn’t matter who has done it, we condemn the fact.”