CV NEWS FEED // Following the expulsion of nineteen priests from the country and continued government harassment, latest reports say the situation “is only worsening in 2024” for Catholic Nicaraguans.
According to a recent U.S. News report, the plight faced by Catholics and some Evangelical Christians in Nicaragua is becoming increasingly grim as President Daniel Ortega continues to persecute those in opposition to his authoritarian regime.
“Life In Nicaragua is hell, because surveillance is brutal,” an exiled priest said in the report. “People now keep their heads down, as they wonder, ‘if they do this to the priests, what will they do to us?’”
Ortego and his wife, Rosario Murillo have accused Catholics and Christians of “terrorist” activities and inciting “civil unrest” geared towards overthrowing government authority.
As CatholicVote recently reported, activist Bianca Jagger addressed the crisis in an article last week, declaring that “it’s time for the world to wake up” to Ortega’s ongoing persecution against Catholics:
The Ortega-Murillo regime’s ‘purge’ of the Catholic Church has included abducting, imprisoning and convicting bishops, priests, seminarians, and members of religious congregations on trumped-up charges of plotting a coup […]
Many have been banished from Nicaragua, with such repressive tactics being likened to Joseph Stalin’s purge of religious institutions in the Soviet Union
Nicaraguan lawyer Martha Patricia Molina also stated in the report that “all the time the silence gets deeper” in the face of Ortega’s wrath. “If it’s dangerous to pray the rosary in the street, it is exceedingly so to report attacks.”
“Many priests believe that if they make reports, there will be more reprisals against the communities,” she added. “We as lay people would like for them to speak, but the only alternatives are cemetery, prison or exile.”
Molina concluded: “The dictatorship, what it wants is to completely eliminate the Catholic faith, because they haven’t succeeded in making the church kneel before them. And they will not succeed.”
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