Nineteen priests kicked overseas, dozens of incidents of harassment and church desecrations, rural areas lacking worship and social services: the situation for Catholic clergy and faithful in Nicaragua is barely worsening in 2024, in keeping with exiled priests, laypeople within the Central American country and human rights advocates.
The fear of the continuing crackdown by President Daniel Ortega – on the Catholic Church particularly but not sparing evangelicals – has develop into so pervasive that it’s silencing criticism of the authoritarian government and even mentions of the repression from the pulpit.
“All the time the silence gets deeper,” said Martha Patricia Molina, a Nicaraguan lawyer who fled to the United States. Her work recording a whole lot of instances of church persecution recently won her an International Religious Freedom Award from the U.S. State Department.
“If it’s dangerous to hope the rosary on the street, it’s exceedingly so to report attacks,” Molina said.
“Many priests imagine that in the event that they make reports, there will likely be more reprisals against the communities. We as laypeople would love for them to talk, however the only alternatives are cemetery, prison or exile.”
She counted 30 church desecrations up to now 12 months, only just a few reported to authorities. Recently, she heard of a priest who went to the police after a theft in his church – only to be cursed at and told he was a suspect.
“Life in Nicaragua is hell, because surveillance is brutal. You can’t say anything that’s against the federal government,” said an exiled priest. Like him, most exiles interviewed for this story spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution against their families or communities in Nicaragua.
“People now keep their heads down, as they wonder, ‘If they do that to the priests, what’s going to they do with us?’” the clergyman added. He was barred from returning to Nicaragua, where he, like many priests and nuns, drew the federal government’s ire for providing shelter and first aid to those injured when the Ortega government violently repressed massive civic protests in 2018.
The unrest then, which began against proposed social security cuts, broadened to demand early elections and to accuse Ortega of authoritarian measures after a whole lot of demonstrators were killed by security forces and allied civilian groups.
Like several Latin American governments tracing their roots back to socialist revolutions, Nicaragua’s has had an uneven relationship with faith leaders for many years. But those protests triggered an escalating and systematic targeting of the church in what the U.S. government’s Commission on International Religious Freedom calls a “campaign of harassment and severe persecution.”
Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, who is also the vice chairman, blame “terrorist” clergy for supporting the civil unrest they claim amounts to plotting a coup against them. Clergy and lay observers say the federal government is attempting to quash the church since it stays the rare critic in Nicaragua that dares to oppose state violence and whose voice is respected by many voters.
The “unprecedented exiling of critical voices” – from religious leaders to journalists and artists – in Nicaragua amounts to a “total censorship plan,” said Alicia Quiñones, who leads the liberty of expression organization PEN International within the Americas.
It’s develop into nearly unimaginable to do independent reporting in Nicaragua, she added, citing last 12 months’s imprisonment of a journalist on the charge of “fake information” after he covered an Easter celebration when public Catholic feasts have largely been barred.
“The pressure is becoming unsufferable,” said one priest now within the United States. Like others, he says Mass-goers have began noticing people within the pews they’ve never seen before and fear they’re there to report on any whiff of opposition to the federal government, even when only a prayer for the protection of clergy imprisoned in often dangerous conditions.
In a rustic where greater than 80% of the population is Christian – about 50% Catholic and greater than 30% evangelicals, in keeping with the U.S. religious freedom commission – the repression cuts deep each spiritually and materially.
It has hit not only clergy and spiritual orders but college students, minority and marginalized populations, even tiny businesses in rural towns that relied on now often prohibited or indoors-only religious processions and patron saints’ feasts for his or her income.
In November, Molina said many priests were even prevented from celebrating traditional Masses in cemeteries for the Day of the Dead, a very important holiday across Latin America.
Nicaragua’s congress, dominated by Ortega’s Sandinista National Liberation Front, has shuttered greater than 3,000 nongovernmental organizations, including Mother Teresa’s charity, creating a serious gap in social services especially in rural areas. In addition to many diocesan assets, the federal government confiscated the distinguished University of Central America, whose Jesuit leaders had opened the doors to student protestors fleeing police and paramilitary attacks.
Despite the growing fear, many faithful proceed to attend church services – where they continue to be available. Especially in rural areas, parishes and chapels are left without priests, though the seminaries still have students so some faithful hope they are going to give you the chance to eventually replace those exiled or forced to flee.
Many of the senior leaders of the Catholic Church, including Bishop Rolando Álvarez who was jailed for greater than a 12 months, were released from prison and sent overseas in negotiations with the Vatican last month. A dozen jailed priests had similarly been sent to the Vatican in October.
The Holy See has offered little public comment on the situation aside from calling for dialogue. The Vatican spokesman didn’t respond when asked by the AP if Nicaragua’s highest-ranking cleric, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes, is in Rome, as some Nicaraguan sources reported.
Managua’s Auxiliary Bishop Silvio Báez has been probably the most outspoken critics of Nicaragua’s repression from the Miami area, where he relies after the pope asked him to depart his country to avoid violent threats. In late January, he wrote on X, formerly often known as Twitter, that he was on the Vatican to fulfill with Pope Francis, who had “shown his interest and love for Nicaragua.”
Many exiles argue that while negotiating to release priests and other political prisoners marks progress, sending them into exile cannot develop into a suitable practice.
“Exile can’t be normalized,” said Dolly Mora, who was forced to flee to the United States, where she’s helping campaign against the practice alongside other Nicaraguan activists. “It’s as unjust as prison. The international community cannot say it’s okay that they’re expelled.”
Without stronger protests from the Vatican and foreign governments, many exiles fear that any church representatives left in Nicaragua will likely be cowed into accommodating the Ortega government, which now only a minority of clergy supporters.
So they hope that continuing to call out the repression and to document each beaten-up priest, each desecrated tabernacle will eventually result in justice.
“The dictatorship, what it wants is to completely eliminate the Catholic faith, because they haven’t succeeded in making the church kneel before them,” Molina said. “And they are going to not succeed.”
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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this story.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely chargeable for this content.
