Nicaragua’s crackdown on Catholic Church is worsening

AP:

Preparations for popular, often daylong Lent and Holy Week processions are underway across Latin America — but not in Nicaragua.

They’ve been largely banned for a second year, one of many concerns for the faithful in a country that human rights advocates, exiled priests and the US government say is pursuing one of the world’s most flagrant persecutions of religion.

The Associated Press spoke with several priests who are in exile in different countries, some after being imprisoned in inhumane conditions in Nicaragua. All requested their names, current locations and circumstances of departure from the Central American country be withheld for fear of repercussions against their families there.

More than 200 religious figures are in exile, making it difficult to hold Mass or hear confessions in Nicaragua, especially in small villages.

Many pastors still in Nicaragua are under near-constant surveillance, obliged to inform the police if they want to visit someone who’s ill and to submit drafts of their sermons for approval, according to those in exile and human rights activists.

With their bank accounts often frozen or stolen, some face shortages of food and medicine. One Catholic priest said his fellow clergy are trying to serve their flock while feeling constrained by constant threat.

US DENOUNCES NICARAGUA’S CRACKDOWN ON RELIGION

The US government has condemned the Nicaraguan government — led by co-presidents Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo — for the crackdown that seems to have intensified in recent years.

On his February trip to the region, Secretary of State Marco Rubio singled out the Nicaraguan government’s effort “to eliminate the Catholic Church and the religious community, and anyone who tries to take power from that regime is punishe”.

In its annual report published in March, the US government’s Commission on International Religious Freedom denounced conditions in Nicaragua as “abysmal”. More than 80 per cent of the population is Christian, about evenly divided between Catholics and evangelicals.

The commission found that over the last year, the Nicaraguan government harassed and deported Catholic clergy, used “intimidation and manipulation” to force leaders of the Indigenous Moravian Church into exile, arrested members of the evangelical Mountain Gateway ministry and allowed attacks on sanctuaries, including arson that destroyed a 400-year-old crucifix in the capital, Managua.

The commission denounced the “arbitrary” cancellation of legal status of most faith-based organisations, which often leads to property seizures. All nuns were ordered to leave the country.

“These are the nuns that really care for the poorest of the poor,” said Maureen Ferguson, one of the US commissioners. “What happens to them when these religious institutions, people motivated by faith, are exiled?”

GOVERNMENT TRIES TO ‘CO-OPT’ FAITH, CRITICS SAY

To prevent last year’s Easter-time processions, thousands of police were deployed, according to the report. Only clergy “aligned” with the government are allowed outdoor worship.

Local governments often create parallel festivities to give the impression that popular piety is still free, advocacy groups like British-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide say.

That’s part of the strategy to try to co-opt the clergy and the faithful, said Félix Maradiaga, a Nicaraguan opposition leader and practicing Catholic who was jailed, then exiled to the United States in 2023.

The Sandinista government “has a long history of trying to create a parallel church, of wanting to take possession of the symbols of faith,” said Maradiaga, who wasn’t allowed to pray publicly or to have a Bible while imprisoned. “The model that Sandinistas want to implement is very similar to that of China. … They will not stop their pressure on the Catholic Church until they obtain a bishops’ conference in some way aligned with the dictatorship’s ideology. They will not succeed.”

TENSIONS BETWEEN NICARAGUA AND FAITH LEADERS

Like several Latin American governments tracing their roots back to socialist revolutions, Nicaragua’s Sandinista National Liberation Front has had an uneven relationship with faith leaders for decades.

The Catholic Church drew the current government’s ire when priests and nuns provided shelter and first aid to those injured when the Ortega government violently repressed civic protests in 2018.

The government has blamed “terrorist” clergy for supporting unrest. Clergy and lay observers say the church has been an increasingly rare voice opposing state violence.

A college professor when the protests started, Maradiaga said students called him saying “They’re killing us” — and clergy opened their churches’ doors.

“What the church did was put itself on the side of those who were being persecuted,” Maradiaga recalled.

Several priests in exile said they witnessed youth being shot during the protests and tended to them, seeing it as an essential part of their ministry to help those hurting.

The faithful continue to attend Mass — although some have also taken to gathering in secret to avoid suspected government spies who record those in the pews, Molina and some clergy said.