“One Sunday I was on my way to visit a community. Suddenly, I was intercepted by paramilitaries travelling in pickup trucks. They started hitting my vehicle and forced me to get out by pushing. They threatened to kill me if I continued to “denounce” in my Sunday homilies. At that moment, they began to hit and kick me all over my body. They tied my hands and feet while threatening me with rifles.”
According to the criteria of
This anonymous testimony is from a Catholic priest in Nicaragua who recounted how he was intimidated by the regime’s security forces a few months ago.
His story appears in the latest installment of the report ‘Nicaragua: A persecuted Church?’ which details how the persecution of the president’s government operates Daniel Ortega and his wife, the vice president Rosario Murilloagainst religious people in that country.
“What they intend in Nicaragua is to completely eliminate the Catholic faith from the country,” warned Martha Patricia Molina, lawyer, researcher and author of the study that has documented the expulsion of at least 245 religious people in the last seven years in that country, an unprecedented case in the world that both the UN and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) They have acknowledged that there is an open “persecution” against Nicaraguan religious people.
What they intend in Nicaragua is to completely eliminate the Catholic faith from the country.
Of the total of 245 people, one is a nuncio, three are bishops, 136 are priests belonging to different dioceses of Nicaragua, three are deacons, 11 are seminarians and 91 more are religious or nuns.
In addition to the banishment of priests, there have been at least 870 attacks, the impossibility of celebrating Holy Week outdoors as occurs in other Catholic nations, the confiscation of 19 religious properties and the illegalization of some 5,500 non-governmental organizations, many of them dedicated to charity with ecclesiastical resources.
Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo.
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Against this backdrop, other voices agree with lawyer Molina in saying that for seven years there has been a systematic effort to “strangle” the Church in this Central American nation governed by Ortega without interruption since 2007.
Among them is José María Tojeira, spokesman for the Jesuits – whose university was confiscated in Nicaragua – who told the agency AFP that “there is an attempt to destroy all possibility of religion and Church, and to create a single way of thinking dependent on the power of the Ortega-Murillo family.”
While the spokesman for the Nicaragua Never Again CollectiveSalvador Marenco also said that the government is seeking to “punish” the Church because it has not remained silent about its “crimes against humanity.” “They are taking away a last ray of hope within Nicaragua,” he added.
Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo.
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Why are Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo obsessed with persecuting the Catholic Church in Nicaragua?
According to the Nicaraguan government, Religious NGOs and the Church supported the 2018 protests and therefore consider them part of an alleged US-sponsored coup plot.
At that time, what sparked the protests was a reform to Social Security that fueled the discontent that had already been brewing in the country. And although, days after announcing the reform, Daniel Ortega decided to withdraw it, the social unrest could not be reversed.
Student groups joined together and the movement included demonstrations against corruption, freedom of the press, high living costs, unemployment and even demanding Ortega’s resignation.
The Church, in addition to protecting the population, has always called for dialogue. Bishop Silvio José Báez himself was about to be assassinated and was forced to go into exile because he always asked the dictatorship to stop all this type of repression and stop killing the people.
However, the protests were repressed with an iron fist and left at least 350 dead in just a couple of months. Organizations such as Amnesty International even documented the presence of paramilitary forces who, wearing balaclavas to hide their identity, began to intimidate the population, especially the youngest.
Since returning to power in 2007, Ortega has focused on crushing any kind of opposition, including activists and candidates that could threaten his governability. He had already managed to concentrate the three institutional powers by accommodating pieces that were in line with his mandate.
However, since 2018 it has become clear that a significant part of the population remains dissatisfied. In the midst of this wave of repression, many, especially young people, found in temples and churches a place of refuge to avoid violence from the authorities.
Twenty-eight days have passed since Carmen Sáenz and Lesbia Gutiérrez were kidnapped by the SANDINISTA POLICE. No one knows anything about them.
I am very afraid of the torture they are receiving at this moment. After hearing the horrors that the prisoners suffered pic.twitter.com/iaNLfMvSe0
— Martha Patricia M (@mpatricia_m) September 7, 2024
“The Church, in addition to protecting the population, has always called for dialogue. Bishop Silvio José Báez himself was about to be assassinated and was forced to go into exile because he always asked the dictatorship to stop all this type of repression and to stop killing the people,” explains lawyer Molina.
In fact, the Nicaraguan digital newspaper The Confidential In one of her editorials, she asserts that Vice President Murillo herself uses attacks against religious people in her speeches for having helped many protesters in 2018. “’How can we believe anything the representatives of the devil say? How dare they blaspheme? Because it is blasphemy, a sacrilege to alter the order of things, and to do so in the name of God.’”
Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Alvarez.
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According to experts, in the face of the social crisis in Nicaragua, the clergy began to include messages and reflections on the political situation in the country during their masses. These speeches called for dialogue, but also rejected and condemned the murder of people.
“This angered the dictatorship and they began to openly attack the Church. At first, what they did was steal (in the topics) to desecrate the Eucharist, to paint the walls of buildings,” says Molina.
The repression then increased, leading to trials of the priests that NGOs considered unfair because they were not allowed to defend themselves. “Their bank accounts were blocked and they were accused of money laundering and terrorism,” Molina said.
Little by little, those who opposed and continued to criticize the government began to be arrested, expelled and monitored 24 hours a day by the intelligence agencies. This is the case, for example, of Rolando Álvarez, the bishop who was sentenced to 26 years in prison for “treason.” Álvarez, in fact, initially refused to be banished from the country, until at the beginning of 2024 he was released from prison and forced to settle in Rome after intense negotiations with the Vatican.
Rosario Murillo, the ‘architect’ of a story of hatred against priests
Rosario Murillo, Ortega’s wife and vice president of Nicaragua, has accused religious figures of being “children of the devil” or “agents of evil” who carry out “spiritual terrorism.”
In the report published by Molina, Murillo is accused of promoting a systematic discourse of hate against religious people.
“In the study we argue that Rosario Murillo promotes hate speech against religious people by calling them devils, Satan and a number of other epithets that she uses against bishops and religious people. Even against Pope Francis, she uses vulgar and coarse language. And the truth is that she expresses herself in this way about anyone who does not agree with her. We hear this language through the official media and it allows the Public Force to act with power and harm religious people,” Molina adds.
By the way, El Confidencial made an analysis of Murillo’s speech during December 2023 and January 2024, special months for Church celebrations. During this time, the vice president gave 30 speeches, in which she used the name of “God” (257 times), the word “peace” (122), “Christ” or “Christianity” (48) and “hate” (29).
For attorney Molina, it is key to understand that Murillo has been gaining prominence in this race against the Church because “she has the power to decide who lives or dies in Nicaragua. She has absolute power thanks to the support she has from members of the police and the army. In Nicaragua, not a single leaf moves without the approval of Mrs. Murillo,” she points out.
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