Apr 12, 2025
Government authorities in Nicaragua have halted numerous church-led Lent and Easter celebrations, replacing them in some cases with government-run events designed to give the impression of religious activity during one of Christendom’s most important holidays.
In 2024, the government deployed roughly 4,000 police officers to prevent Holy Week processions, a common practice among Latin American churches. Similar enforcement is likely this year, according to experts.
Led by co-presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosaria Murillo, Nicaragua’s Sandinista government has exiled hundreds of priests, pastors, and other religious figures in recent years, leaving many communities without leadership. In November 2024, the regime demanded that nuns leave the country by December.
Government Attempts to Coopt the Church
“The model that Sandinistas want to implement is very similar to that of China,” exiled Nicaraguan leader Felix Maradiaga said, according to the Associated Press, commenting that Nicaragua “has a long history of trying to create a parallel church [and] of wanting to take possession of the symbols of faith.”
It is expected that some municipalities will host government-run Holy Week festivities, even while preventing the church from organizing its own Holy Week events. China, similarly, has created parallel government-run churches designed to offer an alternative to the independent church while promoting government propaganda under the guise of religious instruction.
“[Nicaragua] will not stop their pressure on the Catholic church until they obtain a bishops’ conference in some way aligned with the dictatorship’s ideology,” Maradiaga told AP. Still, he expressed confidence that the government would ultimately fail in its efforts. Maradiaga is a prominent figure in the Nicaraguan opposition and in the global effort to promote religious freedom in the Central American country.
In February, the Nicaraguan government suggested that it may stop recognizing episcopal appointments from the Vatican, which has been critical of the Ortega-Murillo regime.
According to a recent report by Christian Solidarity Worldwide, some Catholic priests are required to report to the police for weekly interrogations and government approval of their homilies or sermons. In many cases, priests and other religious leaders are under constant government surveillance and must obtain approval for all pastoral activities.
A Growing Pattern of Persecution
Speaking at the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington D.C. last year, a Nicaraguan priest — speaking anonymously from behind a black curtain for his safety — explained the government’s animus toward the church. “The Catholic church is the last stronghold, the last non-aligned institution left in the country after the regime has made all political parties disappear.”
Though thousands of nongovernmental organizations have lost their legal status due to a murky 2018 law on funding, the Catholic church has been particularly targeted due to its outspoken criticism of the regime’s sordid human rights record and its decision to shelter student protestors in 2019.
“As a church, we are living through the worst moments in our history in Nicaragua since its arrival more than 500 years ago to the present moment,” the priest told the gathered audience. He himself was arrested, insulted, beaten, and imprisoned for months. His family in Nicaragua is left to live with police parked outside their home, watching their every move.
This type of surveillance is increasingly common in Nicaragua where, according to the priest, “every Sunday, patrol cars full of police are parked in front of the country’s Catholic churches” and “the faithful who attend the Eucharist on Sundays are photographed [and] the homilies delivered by the remaining priests are being recorded.”
This type of surveillance is strikingly similar to that imposed by China on its own independent religious communities. Nicaragua maintains a close relationship with China, which it sees as an important ally in the face of increasing sanctions from the West and a struggling economy. In December 2023, China and Nicaragua announced upgraded relations, bringing the two dictatorships even closer together than before.
Nicaragua has also begun restricting the free movement of religious leaders to prevent pastors and priests from ministering in areas that have lost their spiritual leaders to exile or imprisonment.
U.S. Government Response
The U.S. Department of State added Nicaragua to the Special Watchlist (SWL) of countries with particularly severe violations of religious freedom in 2019, a designation that continued until 2022 when it was raised to the Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) list. The latter designation indicates increased concern about the state of religious freedom in Nicaragua and normally carries with it legislatively mandated sanctions.
“Catholic clergy and laity [have] continued to experience government harassment,” a U.S. State Department publication found, citing media reports, “including slander, arbitrary investigations by government agencies based on charges that clergy and laity said were unfounded, withholding of tax exemptions, and denial of religious services for political prisoners.”
In March, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) renewed its recommendation that Nicaragua be designated as a CPC. Calling the state of religious freedom “abysmal,” USCIRF was particularly critical of Ortega and Murillo, who have led an aggressive consolidation of power in recent months. In addition to announcing his wife as co-president earlier this year, Ortega brought the legislative and judicial branches under his authority as well.
In its attempt to control the church, the Nicaraguan government has resorted to “arbitrarily arresting, imprisoning, and exiling religious leaders and adherents, canceling the legal status of religious organizations, and harassing and intimidating worshipers,” according to the recent USCIRF report.
“The Ortega-Murillo regime,” the report goes on to say, “also harassed religious leaders and worshipers through threats, conspicuous monitoring of religious services, and acts of vandalism, including against members of the primarily indigenous Moravian church.”
Nicaragua withdrew from the U.N. Human Rights Council in February, days after a group of U.N. experts released a strongly worded report rebuking it for systematically cracking down on human rights, democratic norms, and religious groups.
“We are seeing the methodical repression of anyone who dares to challenge Ortega and Murillo’s grip on power,” said Ariela Peralta, an expert who contributed to the report. “This is a government at war with its own people.”
The Ortega regime claims that the U.N. and the Organization of American States, both of which have issued opposed Nicaragua’s crackdown on religious groups, are part of an international smear campaign against it. According to Reuters, Murillo denounced the U.N. report as “falsehoods” and “slander” but did not provide evidence to support her claims.
Stay Awake. Keep Watch.
SOURCE: International Christian Concern