Nicaragua’s Violent Persecution of Christians Part of Regional ‘Transformations’: Analyst

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega attends a meeting with members of the Central American Integration System (SICA) in a hotel in Panama City on April 10, 2015. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

The Catholic Church has been an enduring symbol of Nicaragua’s resistance to the regime of President Daniel Ortega since 2018. Consequently, the institution’s peaceful defiance has firmly placed church leaders and the faithful in Ortega’s crosshairs.

Tensions escalated between the Catholic Church and Ortega on March 18, when the Vatican closed its embassy in Managua. Earlier that week, Ortega had lashed out at Pope Francis, who compared the president’s administration to a Nazi dictatorship during an interview with Argentine news organization Infobae.

Ortega denounced Catholic leaders sympathetic to the opposition as “terrorists” and called the Catholic Church a “mafia.”

Demonstrators stand behind a barricade during clashes with riot police during a protest against Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's government, in Managua, Nicaragua, on May 30, 2018. Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters

The pope’s remarks were in response to more than 400 attacks over the past five years against the Catholic Church, and its priests, bishops, and parishioners. Ongoing assaults by police and other actors within Ortega’s regime have resulted in dozens of church leaders fleeing the country, lest they face imprisonment.

Among those who have been imprisoned is Bishop Rolando Alvarez, who was sentenced to 26 years in prison in February for “treason” and spreading “fake news” about Ortega’s administration.

“The Catholic Church is the last, the loudest voice against his regime,” Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) said during a March 22 subcommittee hearing.

Some of the strikes against the faithful include the siege of the Church of the Divine Mercy in 2018.

Nicaraguan police and paramilitary actors riddled the church for 15 hours with bullets while 200 students, volunteers, religious leaders, and journalists huddled inside under gunfire that killed at least two people.

Months of university student-led protests against the Ortega regime spurred the attack. In total, the 2018 protests left more than 300 civilians dead.

In 2020, one of Ortega’s agents threw a bomb into a cathedral in Managua, destroying a 400-year-old sacred icon of Christ.

Last year, Ortega dissolved hundreds of nongovernmental organizations and expelled 18 Catholic nuns from their missions in poverty-stricken areas of the capital. His administration also closed 19 Catholic TV and radio stations in 2022.

Just last month, Ortega exiled 222 political prisoners to the United States. Among them were priests, key opposition leaders, and former presidential candidates.

“From Managua, the message is clear. Ortega has made Nicaragua a prison for anyone who kneels to God the father,” Salazar said.

Lifting the Veil

“I think Ortega has ratcheted up the authoritarian manner since 2018. Unfortunately, I think that will remain,” Joseph Humire, the executive director of Washington think tank Center for a Secure Free Society,  told The Epoch Times.

He says Ortega’s behavior in Nicaragua follows a predictable path of authoritarian leaders in the region, which he called the “14-year benchmark.”

Historically, Latin American officials have a time frame, during which they maintain the appearance of running a democracy. According to Humire, that’s usually about 14 years. After that, he says, a leader’s true intentions are revealed.

“You either change governments or you lift the veil,” he said.

Humire noted that Ortega has been selling the socialist utopia angle to Nicaraguans since his return to office in 2007, even as stark economics don’t support his vision.

Nicaragua has remained a desperately poor country, dogged by an economic crisis that began in 2018 and minimal foreign investment outside of fellow draconian allies such as Russia, China, and Iran.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega (R) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) attend a welcome ceremony at an airport in Managua, Nicaragua, on July 11, 2014. RIA-Novosti/Alexei Nikolsky, Presidential Press Service/AP Photo

Coupled with the second-highest poverty rates in the region, Ortega’s passionate speeches about strength and nationalism are reaching fewer ears these days.

Some Nicaraguans believe that’s the impetus for Ortega’s crackdowns on the Catholic Church, since maintaining a vice-like grip on power means silencing dissent from any source.

“Bishop Alvarez is in prison simply because, from the pulpit, he expressed the following beliefs: ‘A Christian cannot have false neutralities. He who remains silent in the face of human rights violations has already decided,'” former Nicaragua presidential candidate and political prisoner Felix Maradiaga told the U.S. Congress on March 22.

But Ortega’s persecution of Christians isn’t limited to those who speak out against his authority. In recent months, Maradiaga said there had been incidents in which Sandinista police forbade Christians from receiving communion in the church.

Maradiaga called Ortega a “Relic of the Cold War.”

“He embodies a legacy of oppression against human dignity,” he said.

Grand Transformations

Ortega is a former Sandinista revolutionary who helped end the Somoza family’s 44-year rule in 1979. He then ushered in a new era of extreme leftist rule via the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) with the support of Cuba and Russia.

“The FSLN was actually founded and organized in Cuba,” regional analyst and author Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat told The Epoch Times. “These totalitarian regimes see Catholic[s] ... as the true spiritual and philosophical opposition to their designs.”

Riot police are pictured during a protest against the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in Managua, Nicaragua, on March 16, 2019. Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters

While Ortega’s FSLN has Cuban roots, it has always been more of a “violent, esoteric Marxist cult” than a traditional communist party, Boronat says, although both appear to share a common desire to eradicate religion and faith.

“It has a deep-seated rejection of Catholicism at its root for both spiritual and political reasons,” he said, adding that Ortega’s FSLN has a long-term plan for totalitarian rule based on Cuba’s Castro dynasty and also the Chinese Communist Party.

Humire shares that sentiment, saying Ortega’s political and religious persecution will become the “norm” in Nicaragua and other countries with entrenched authoritarian leaders.

“That’s the lesson from Russia and China,” he said. “We’re living in a period of history where grand transformations are taking place.”

More than that, he says Ortega’s actions are symptomatic of big regional changes. Some of these include expanded relations with China, Russia, and Iran. It’s a situation that Humire says the United States can’t afford to ignore.

U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) also expressed concern over the Ortega regime after the chain of violent attacks on Nicaragua’s Christians.

“Under President Ortega, Nicaragua has become a pariah dictatorship in league with other human rights abusers like Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and the People’s Republic of China.”