Nicaragua is forcing the nation’s Catholic priests to present themselves at local police stations weekly for questioning and submitting their homilies for review, the online Catholic outlet The Pillar reported on Wednesday.
The regime of communist dictator Daniel Ortega and his wife and “co-president” Rosario Murillo has waged an ongoing, relentless persecution against Nicaragua’s Catholic Church in retaliation for the Church’s support of the 2018 wave of anti-communist protests. Ortega responded to the peaceful protests with a brutal crackdown campaign that left over 300 dead.
Ortega’s persecution of Christianity dramatically escalated in 2022, the same year the communist dictator, a self-professed “Catholic,” declared a “war” against the Vatican, accusing it of using its priests to “stage a coup” against his regime. The escalation has included: the banishment of priests, nuns, and other members of the Church from Nicaragua; the systematic shutdown and forced seizure of Catholic media, universities, and other assets; the banning of Catholic processions; and several other actions.
The Pillar, citing a report recently published by the Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), explained that the Ortega regime imposed “precautionary measures” on the Catholic Church that forced its priests to make weekly, in-person reports at local police offices and to share details of their planned activities. The Catholic priests are forced to present copies of their weekly homilies to the local police to verify that these do not contain anti-regime messages, and they are prohibited from leaving their respective municipalities without government authorization.
All indoor religious activities, CWS’s report described, are subject to “overt and covert” regime surveillance and monitoring. The regime warns the Church’s religious leaders not to speak or pray about specific topics, such as preaching for unity, justice, or praying for imprisoned religious leaders or the general situation as a whole — which can be considered as “criticism of the government and treated as a crime.”
The outlet pointed out that the restrictions specifically affect dioceses with large numbers of exiled priests, such as Matagalpa, which now relies on priests from other dioceses coming in on a weekly basis. The Matagalpa diocese is one of the hardest hit by Ortega’s relentless persecution of Christianity. In 2022, Nicaraguan police conducted a two-week raid of the parish that culminated with the arrest of its bishop, Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, and several other members of the Church.
Bishop Álvarez, an outspoken critic of the Ortega regime, was sentenced to 26 years in prison on “treason” charges and stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship, rendering him a stateless person in clear violation of international law. Álvarez spent over 500 days in prison before Ortega banished him to the Vatican in January 2024.
The Pillar reported that the new restrictions follow Álvarez giving an interview to the Catholic television network EWTN in January, one year after his banishment from Nicaragua. The interview drew the ire of the Nicaraguan dictatorial couple, who responded in an unhinged rant in which it accused the Vatican of being a “depraved pedophile” state guilty of “Pharisean mysticism.”
Weeks after the interview, the Ortega regime had the building of the Episcopal Curia of Matagalpa turned into the location of a social security-affiliated company and stole all of the important relics. The regime originally seized the building during the 2022 raid on the parish and kept it under the constant guard of local police, according to statements from the local community.
According to statements from lay people who spoke with the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa in March anonymously, in other dioceses, priests are not required to go to the police station, but instead the police go to the parishes and ask them for a summary of their weekly activities and to ask how many masses are scheduled in that week.
“I asked some priest friends if it is true that they are weekly asking for permission to celebrate mass and they have told me that no, that the Police only comes to ask how many masses are scheduled in the week,” the unnamed layman said, and suggested that the measure aims to keep track of the schedules of the priests to monitor what is said in their sermons, which do not contain social messages or denunciations but focus only on “theologically” explaining the readings of the Mass.
In November, the Ortega regime kidnapped and banished Monsignor Carlos Herrera, Bishop of Jinotega and head of the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua (CEN) after he criticized Jinotega Mayor Leonidas Centeno for disrespecting a Mass he presided over by having the municipality play loud music during the service.
“What the mayor and all the local authorities are doing is sacrilegious… We ask God’s forgiveness for them and for ourselves,” Bishop Herrera said during that Mass.
The Ortega regime responded to Herrera’s remarks by kidnapping him after he attended a meeting with CEN’s other remaining bishops in the capital city of Managua before banishing him to Guatemala. Monsignor Herrera was the third Catholic bishop banished by the Nicaraguan communist regime in 2024 after Álvarez and Monsignor Isidoro del Carmen Mora, Bishop of Siuna, who was banished alongside Bishop Álvarez and 15 priests in January 2024.
“A source close to the Nicaraguan bishops’ conference told The Pillar that an increase in persecution last summer was believed to be a pressure campaign by the government to force exiled bishops to resign their sees in order to be replaced by bishops who were friendly to the government,” the report read. “Similar moves could be attempted again, they warned.”
“Local Church watchers have compared the Nicaraguan situation to China. Many believe Ortega might like to have his own government-approved Catholic Church if the Vatican does not yield to the pressure,” the report continued.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
