Nine priests and a deacon were detained on Aug 1 and 2 — with some taken from parishes and parish residences — according to independent Nicaragua media. An octogenarian priest was also detained on July 27 in the Diocese of Estelí, where Bishop Álvarez is the apostolic administrator.

"The Diocese of Matagalpa practically no longer has any clergy. We've been expelled, pressured and forced to flee. Parishes are on their own," an exiled priest familiar with the diocese told OSV News.

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Nicaragua's government declared Pope Francis's Society of Jesus (Jesuit) order illegal on Wednesday.

All the Jesuits' property and assets were confiscated. The government claims that's because the Jesuits had failed to comply with tax laws.

On Wednesday, the San Salvador-based Jesuit Province of Central America which oversees the Jesuit order in Nicaragua decried the expulsion.

The Nicaraguan decree "cancelled the [Jesuits] legal status" and allowed the government to seize the Jesuits' "immovable and movable property," they announced.

The decision was made "without evidence that the administrative procedures established by law had been carried out."

Nor did the decree allow "the opportunity for a legitimate defence on the part of the Jesuits and without an impartial body that judges and stops these totally unjustified and arbitrary abuses of authority."

Crimes against humanity

The Jesuits say that the decree is a fresh act of "aggression" against the Society of Jesus.

It is "framed in a national context of systematic repression classified as ‘crimes against humanity' by the group of experts on Human Rights in Nicaragua formed by the United Nations.

The government's actions are aimed at "the full establishment of a totalitarian regime" the Jesuits say.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo, Nicaragua's Vice President, have failed to "at least being honest with these facts."

The Jesuits say the president and vice president are responsible for impeding an independent and neutral judiciary, which would allow it "to take measures to stop, reverse and sanction" the unjust actions that have been taken.

Their statement calls on the couple to "cease the repression" and seek "a rational solution in which truth, dialogue, justice, respect for human rights and for the rule of law prevail."

It also asks the Ortega government to respect the "freedom and total integrity" of the Jesuits and their collaborators.

Thousands of Nicaraguan victims are "waiting for justice and the repair of the damage that the current Nicaraguan government is causing," the Jesuits say.

At least 26 universities have been closed and their assets seized by the government since December 2021. The most recent occurred two weeks ago.

Catholic tension

Tensions with the Catholic Church in the country have escalated.

Diplomatic relations with the Vatican were severed in April when Nicaragua ousted the Vatican's envoy. The Holy See subsequently formally closed its embassy.

Last year, two orders of nuns were expelled.

In August 2022, Nicaraguan authorities arrested Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who was among the Church's most outspoken critics of the Ortega regime.

He was charged with treason and sentenced to 26 years in prison.

Nicaragua has also outlawed or closed over 3,000 civic groups and NGOs including the Red Cross.

Thousands of Nicaraguans have fled since the regime's violent crackdown on the 2018 protests.

Defiant thanks

The Jesuits say they're grateful for the many expressions of support and solidarity they have received "in the face of these growing outrages."

Source

• Crux Now

In 1990 Ernesto Cardenal resigned from the FLSN. Father Cardenal, who died in 2020, charged Daniel Ortega — the current dictatorial president — with betraying the revolution's ideals. 'Those who now govern calling themselves Sandinistas are not,' Cardenal declared.

Unlike Cuba, the Nicaraguan revolution was never secular. Liberation Theology highly influenced the Nicaraguan Revolution.

Many priests joined the guerrilla fight and the post-revolution period — this was the case of Miguel D'Escoto, Edgard Parrales, Uriel Molina, Gaspar García Laviana and Fernando Cardenal, brother of Ernesto Cardenal

'Between Christianity and revolution, there is no contradiction' was a popular 1980s belief. And yet, the Sandinistas and Nicaragua's Catholic Church have had, to say the least, a patchy historical relationship.

The ideological contradictions between the Sandinistas and the Catholic church are fundamental to this fickle historical relationship.

In the 1980s, the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua, led by archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo, adopted the US view of the Sandinistas as a communist expansion threat.

In 1985, Pope John Paul II named Obando y Bravo as Cardenal, who became the standard bearer of the fight against the Sandinistas and exponents of the Liberation Theology.

In the 1996 elections, Obando y Bravo called to vote against Ortega. Catholic leaders have often backed the country's conservative elite. Defeated and infuriated, Ortega began a systematic campaign against the Catholic hierarchy.

After three failed attempts, Ortega returned to power in 2007. In another turn of events, Ortega's victory was due to the support received from Cardenal Obando y Bravo.

In the campaign, Ortega made an offer the conservative Catholic hierarchy couldn't refuse. He championed an unforgiving law that placed Nicaragua among a tiny group of nations that criminalise abortion under any circumstances.

To ingratiate himself even further with the Catholic Church, Ortega renewed the wedding vows with Rosario Murillo, now his vice-president, in a mass officiated by Cardenal Miguel Obando y Bravo.

Between 2007 to 2018, Ortega disbursed nearly US$20 million in donations to Catholic and Evangelical churches. According to an investigation by Connectas, an independent digital media, of the almost 20 million, 44.21 per cent was directed to the Catholic church and 12.50 per cent to protestants.

The rest, 43.29 per cent, went to the Catholic University Redemptoris Mater, a private university founded in 1992 by Cardenal Miguel Obando y Bravo.

The first Central American native-born Cardinal, Obando y Bravo, died in 2018. Ortega was left without a formidable Catholic ally in the worst year of his fourth consecutive term.

The Ortega regime increases its persecution of the Church

On April 18, 2018, Nicaragua exploded into nationwide protests in reaction to Ortega's social security reforms — reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund, IMF. In Latin America, street protests can quickly oust a government.

Hence, Ortega's repression has been brutal. Paramilitary groups are doing the dirty work. Leading political leaders, including many Sandinistas, are now in prison.

Newspapers and radio stations have been shut down. Since 2018, Ortega has outlawed 267 NGOs, including women's groups serving vulnerable communities.

The regime maintains over 190 people locked up for political reasons. According to data from the monthly lists of the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners, at least 34 of these prisoners are in the cells of the El Chipote, the heinous Managua jail.

It was here, in El Chipote, where former Sandinista guerrilla Hugo Torres Jimenez, one of 46 opposition figures jailed since last year, died last February at 73.

The Catholic Church has played a crucial role in Nicaragua's social explosion. Since the protests broke out, priests have called for marches and hunger strikes.

Managua's cathedral has sheltered student demonstrators and has been a place for collecting food and money to support them. The Managua Jesuit-run Central American University provided refuge for student protesters.

Catholic priests and institutions are under siege. Rosario Murillo, the wife of Ortega and the country's vice-president, has been vitriolic — 'sons of the devil,' she has called Catholic priests.

In less than four years, the Catholic Church has suffered 190 attacks and desecrations, including a fire in the Cathedral of Managua.

Not even the nuns from Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity have been spared — last July, the nuns were expelled, and the organisation was stripped of its legal status.

In the last five months, the Ortega regime has increased its persecution of the Church, accusing them of being 'terrorists.'

The conflict has been further exacerbated by the detention of Bishop Rolando Álvarez, the most outspoken critic of Ortega. Álvarez is the Bishop of Matagalpa, Nicaragua's seventh largest city.

The government has shut eight Matagalpa province radio stations, seven of them run by Álvarez.

Managua and Vatican City are separated by almost 10,000 kilometres. The long wait for a reaction from Pope Francis to the crisis in Nicaragua finally came about on August 21.

'I follow closely with concern and pain the situation created in Nicaragua, which involves people and institutions,' the pontiff said after the Sunday angelus in St. Peter's Square.

However, Francis didn't mention the detention of clerics or condemn Daniel Ortega's despotism. Pope Francis is from the Global South — a Latin American.

He knows Latin American conflicts are far more nuanced than the unnuanced binary, good vs evil, constructed by commentators of the Global North. The crisis in Nicaragua is not clear-cut.

• Antonio Castillo is a Latin American journalist and Director of the Centre for Communication, Politics and Culture, CPC, RMIT University, Melbourne.

Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who serves as the radio's coordinator and leads the remote northern Matagalpa diocese, announced the closures on Monday.

Álvarez said he had received a letter from the state telecommunications agency Telcor informing him of the closures.

"All our radio stations have been closed, but they will not cancel the word of God" Álvarez said on Twitter.

The Nicaraguan telecommunications agency said the radio stations did not meet the technical requirements to be on air. However, Telcor did not specify what those requirements were.

Álvarez called the move "an injustice" and urged Telcor's director to show the legality.

Relations between the Catholic Church and the Ortega government have deteriorated since 2018, when there were sustained protests against the president's rule and a subsequent crackdown by the government.

Ortega has maintained that the protests in 2018 were an attempt to forcibly remove him from office with international backing. His government has systematically pursued opposition figures and organisations viewed as critics.

Bishop Álvarez has been one of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's most outspoken critics in the church. He has called for the release of prisoners, including political opposition leaders. Earlier this year, he went on a hunger strike to protest what he called "police persecution" against him.

Álvarez said that police had occupied the parish house in Sebaco, where one of the radio stations operated. Sebaco is about 65 miles north of the country's capital, Managua.

The Matagalpa diocese denounced the occupation in a statement. It said the parish priest, Rev Uriel Vallejos, also a government critic, was inside the house.

Videos shared on social media showed Nicaraguan police firing tear gas and shots into the air on Monday night before taking control of the parish and the radio station.

Vallejo took refuge in the parish house and, as of Tuesday morning, was still locked inside with eight accompanying parishioners, according to a tweet sent by the priest.

Sources

• Reuters
• NewsMax

Dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor, the Missionaries of Charity are among 101 non-governmental organisations the legislator wants to close.

Some of the other Catholic NGOs in for the chop include the Catholic Foundation for Human Development Assistance for Nicaraguans, the Spirituality Foundation for Children of Nicaragua, the My Childhood Mothers Foundation and the Diriomito Children's Care Home Association.

Filiberto Rodríguez has prepared an order to shut down the NGO. He presented the order in a June 22 letter to the country's legislature.

The text, which includes several allegations against NGOs, could be debated by the National Assembly in the coming days. It alleges for example that the Missionaries of Charity order "has failed to comply with its obligations".

These obligations are set out in legislation regulating nonprofit organisations, money-laundering, financing terrorism and financing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

According to Daniel Ortega's government, the Missionaries of Charity in Nicaragua are not accredited "by the Ministry for the Family to function as a nursery-centre for childhood development, a home for girls and a home for the elderly."

Neither "do they have an operating permit from the Ministry of Education to provide remedial education for students".

Furthermore, their "financial statements reported to the Ministry of the Interior don't agree" with other documents presented for review.

The Missionaries of Charity Association in Nicaragua was opened in the late 1980s.

They work with a range of people in need. In the city of Granada, for instance, they take in abandoned adolescents and victims of abuse. Besides providing spiritual and psychological help, minors receive regular classes in music, theatre, sewing, beauty and other trades.

In the capital, Managua, the sisters run a nursing home providing the elderly with food, clothing and other care.

The Missionaries of Charity also provide remedial education for minors at risk and run a nursery for poor children. These children are mostly children of single mothers and street vendors.

While the National Assembly still has to approve the order to close, Ortega's political party holds 75 out of the 90 seats. Approval is expected.

Managua Auxiliary Bishop Silvio José Báez, who has been living in exile at the request of Pope Francis since April 2019 due to numerous death threats, deplored the situation.

He wrote on Twitter from Miami: "It makes me very sad that the dictatorship has forced the Missionaries of Charity of Teresa of Calcutta to leave the country. Nothing justifies depriving the poor of charitable care."

During the past four years, the Catholic Church in Nicaragua has been the target of 190 attacks and desecrations. These include a fire in the Managua Cathedral as well as police harassment and persecution of bishops and priests.

Source

• Catholic News Agency

On Monday, Archbishop Waldemar Sommertag, the Vatican nuncio in Nicaragua, said Pope Francis had "granted with benevolence the absolution of all canonical censures" imposed on Cardenal.

Cardenal (94) was suspended from his priestly ministry and duties by St John Paul II because of his militancy and for being a minister in Daniel Ortega's government. St John Paul II suspended Cardenal "a divinis".

Cardenal, who is a poet and Marxist liberation theology activist, actively collaborated with the Sandinista National Liberation Front revolution that ended the dictatorship of then-president Anastasio Somoza.

He was appointed Minister of Culture the same day the Sandinistas were victorious on July 19, 1979. He held the office until 1987.

However, the Code of Canon Law (No. 285) prohibits priests from holding partisan political offices.

After repeated attempts by the Vatican and their religious orders to convince Cardenal and three conferes to resign their positions in the Sandinista government, Father Miguel D'Escoto, Cardenal and his brother Father Fernando Cardenal, who was the education minister, were suspended.

A fourth priest, Father Edgar Parrales, who was ambassador to the Organization of American States, requested laicisation.

In January 2017 Cardenal was interviewed about his suspension.

At the time, he confirmed his suspension was still in place. He said he was "not interested in their [the Vatican] lifting it."

However, the statement announcing the lifting of Cardenal's suspension references a request made by Cardenal to Pope Francis, which suggests Cardenal may have changed his mind about having not been interested in having the sanctions removed.

Auxiliary Bishop Silvio Báez posted a photograph of the visit he made with Cardenal in the hospital last friday on Twitter. In the accompanying tweet he said:

"Today I visited in the hospital my priest friend, Fr. Ernesto Cardenal, with whom I spoke for a few minutes. After praying for him, I knelt down beside his bed and asked for his blessing as a priest of the Catholic Church, to which he agreed joyfully."

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Vatican News
• America magazine
• Image: Catholic News Agency

Fr Mario Guevara was taken to hospital to be treated for severe burns to his face, arms, and shoulders.

The alleged attacker, 24 year old Elis Leonidovna Gonn, was detained by people in the cathedral as she tried to escape.

She is now in police custody.

The Archdiocese of Managuas says Guevara, who was admitted to the intensive care unit, is now in a stable condition. He has been discharged and is continuing his treatment at home.

"We deplore this act because we priests are there to provide a service and this pains us very much: that they would attack a priest in this way because they attacked his health," the Cardinal of Managua, Leopoldo Brenes says.

The reasons for the attack are unknown.

It occurred two days after a man, identified as Ramon Mercedes Cabrera, posted a video on social networks with strong threats against Nicaraguan Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes "and anyone who is Catholic."

Cabrera also says on the video that he has the "support of the Front" (Sandinista National Liberation Front, FSLN), the ruling party.

It is not known if the attack had any connection with Cabrera's video.

Source

• Zenit
• Catholic News Agency
• Havana Times
• Image: Crime Russia

The armed police killed two students and wounded dozens of others.

The students had been occupying the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua during two months of protests against President Daniel Ortega's government. They were protesting particularly against Ortega's pension reforms and increasingly authoritarian rule.

After police forced them out of the university, some students rang their parents to say goodbye. They were sure that they were going to die.

Others called Divine Mercy parish priest, Father Raul Zamora.

Zamora suggested they take refuge in the Divine Mercy church.

Parish priest Father Raul Zamora says he decided to offer sanctuary to 150 students after paramilitary opened fire on their protest earlier this month.

He says prayer (the divine mercy chaplet and the rosary) sustained them through over 15 hours of gunfire that followed.

"That university is actually under my pastoral care," said Zamora. "It is right next to our parish. I am in charge of attending to those students spiritually. I knew the students personally."

"I told them, ‘Come to the parish. Come to the parish. Don't stay there,'" said the priest.

Students began to arrive at the church in groups.

Zamora and other church staff made several trips over to the university to search for the wounded.

Police and paramilitary were continuing to attack the campus.

"Every time the students tried to go into the parish cars, they would start shooting," said Zamora.

He thought that the students would be safe once they were in the church, but then the paramilitary gunfire was directed at the parish itself.

Joshua Partlow, a Washington Post reporter who had been covering the protests, ended up taking refuge along with the students in the church.

He says the students "carried the wounded into the Rev. Raul Zamora's rectory and put them on chairs or on the blood-spattered tile floor."

"Not long after 6 p.m.... the paramilitaries had appeared, cutting off the only exit from Divine Mercy and firing at the remaining barricade just outside the church. It became clear that everyone inside . . . would not be going anywhere."

Everyone remained in the church overnight. Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes Solorzano and Archbishop Waldemar Sommertag, the apostolic nuncio, were then able to negotiate the students' release.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Crux Now
• Image: Vatican News

The Nuncio, Archbishop Waldemar Stanisław Sommertag, has appealed for peace in the Pope's name.

Violence has beset the country since April this year.

"With all my human and spiritual strength, I appeal to the consciences of all to reach a truce and return quickly to a national dialogue to seek together an adequate solution to solve the crisis," Sommertag says.

He says he and Pope Francis "weep for all the dead and pray for their families."

The Nicaraguan Pro-Human Rights Association say 351 people died in killings related to unrest between April 19 and July 10 this year.

They say the majority of the deaths were civilians protesting against President Daniel Ortega and calling for his resignation.

Ortega has been in power since 2007 and is on his third mandate. His wife Rosario Murillo is the Vice President.

Last Tuesday, police and pro-government militias took control of the Masaya.

Masaya is a suburb of the Nicaraguan capital Managua. It has become a symbol of resistance to Ortega.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the Apostolic Nuncio called the violence a "tragic moment" for the country.

"I wish to express, on behalf of the Holy Father and the Holy See, my deep concern for the grave situation the country is facing.

"Obviously, it is unacceptable to think that the dead and victims of violence can solve the political crisis and guarantee a future of peace and prosperity in Nicaragua."

The Catholic Church has recently become a target of threats and attacks by security forces.

Sommertag, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes and Bishop Silvio Báez were attacked by pro-government activists on 9 July.

In a separate incident, Bishop Abelardo Mata narrowly avoided an attack last week.

Despite these acts of aggression, the bishops are continuing to call for a return to dialogue with Ortega's government.

They are condemning "the lack of political will on the part of the government to dialogue in sincerity and seek real paths towards democracy."

Ortega, who originally asked church leaders to mediate the crisis, said last week their actions disqualified them as mediators.

He said the bishops had given him an ultimatum to call early elections and alleged that churches have been used to stockpile weapons and stage attacks.

"I thought they were mediators, but no, they are committed to the coup mongers. They were part of the coup mongers' plan," Ortega said.

Source

• Crux Now
• Vatican News
• Crux Now
• Vatican News
• Image: Opennews24

Fr Cardenal was suspended from the priesthood after refusing to step down as education minister in the left-wing government, which he joined following the overthrow of the Somoza regime in 1979.

Fr Cardenal, a supporter of Liberation Theology, was expelled from the Jesuits.

But he stated he could not conceive of a God who would ask him to abandon his commitment to the people.

Fr Cardenal led a successful literacy campaign in Nicaragua.

He was eventually re-admitted to the Jesuits in 1996.

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Maryknoll priest Fr Miguel D'Escoto Brockman, 81, had formally requested permission to resume priestly duties and to celebrate Mass before he died.

Nicaraugua's foreign minister from 1979 to 1990, he is to be accompanied by the Maryknoll superior general while being re-integrated into priestly ministry.

Although barred from priestly ministry, Fr D'Escoto remained a member of his Maryknoll congregation.

Despite repeated entreaties by the Vatican and religious orders, he and two other clerics persisted as ministers in the Sandanista government and received suspensions as priests in 1985.

The Code of Canon Law prohibits priests from holding partisan political offices.

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