Experts explain why dictatorship in Nicaragua abducts and exiles priests

Emilio Blasco, director of the Center for Global Affairs at the University of Navarra in Spain, says Daniel Ortega persecutes the Catholic Church because “he perceives it as a stronghold of opposition, of people who think for themselves and that he cannot dominate as he dominates other sectors of society.” / Credit: EWTN Noticias/Screenshot

ACI Prensa Staff, Aug 13, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).

The dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, in Nicaragua has been on a long campaign of retaliating against the Catholic Church dating back to 2018, when Church leaders expressed support for the people who were demonstrating against proposed reforms and Ortega’s authoritarian rule.

One of the regime’s tactics in response has been abducting and exiling priests. In the most recent sweep beginning July 26, police abducted nine priests from their dioceses and sent them to Our Lady of Fatima Interdiocesan Seminary in the country’s capital, Managua. Of these, seven were exiled to Rome.

Two experts explained why the regime in the Central American country is ramping up its repressive tactic at this time.

Emilio Blasco, director of the Center for Global Affairs at the University of Navarra in Spain, told “EWTN Noticias” that “all that effort that the government is making to persecute any hint of opposition, not only political but also cultural and religious, shows that the government’s intention is to shore itself up and to remove, sometimes eliminate, people who think differently.”

For Blasco, Ortega persecutes the Catholic Church because “he perceives it as a stronghold of opposition, of people who think for themselves and that he cannot dominate as he dominates other sectors of society.”

This is further aggravated by the fact that in Nicaragua “the power of the Catholic Church remains great, and one way to control everything is to go against the Church, eliminating those voices that [Ortega] considers most critical.”

For the Spanish analyst, these deportations are taking place in light of “what is happening in Venezuela: international opinion, the attention of the media in Latin America is focused on Venezuela and that makes it so that perhaps [Ortega] can feel that he has a freer hand to carry out these arrests in Nicaragua.”

Miguel Mendoza, a Nicaraguan journalist living in exile in the United States, also told “EWTN Noticias” that what the Nicaraguan dictatorship is seeking to do is to “put an end to a religion that is so important to all Nicaraguans.”

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Mendoza also commented that these days “there is speculation that the dictatorship was uneasy, believing that from Rome, Bishop Rolando Álvarez continued giving guidance to these priests. [Matagalpa] is the diocese that they see as totally adversarial. That’s the reason, because it makes no other sense since the priests are silenced under the threat of being abducted.”

Matagalpa is the diocese of Álvarez, a human rights defender and critic of the dictatorship, who beginning in August 2022 was put under house arrest and finally sentenced in February 2023 to 26 years in prison in a controversial judicial process. He was deported in January of this year to Rome, where he now lives in exile.

The journalist also charged that these days “Sunday and weekday Masses are not taking place in a peaceful atmosphere, but rather there are police officers, harassment, and repression.”

“It is also believed that Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo are trying to pressure the Vatican to … have a model similar to that of China” regarding the selection of new bishops, as established in the provisional agreement signed in 2018, renewed in 2020 and 2022 between the Holy See and the Vatican.

“It is presumed that this is the tactic” of the Ortega and Murillo dictatorship to get “bishops who are in line with their politics because there are also priests close to the regime,” Mendoza noted.

According to researcher Martha Patricia Molina, author of the report “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church?”, the priests detained by the dictatorship in recent days are Monsignor Ulises Vega Matamoros, Monsignor Edgar Sacasa Sierra, Father Victor Godoy, Father Jairo Pravia Flores, Father Marlon Velasquez, Father Harvin Torrez, and Father Raul Villegas, all of them from the clergy of the Diocese of Matagalpa.

Completing the list are Friar Silvio Romero of the Diocese of Juigalpa and Father Frutos Constantino Valle Salmerón, who as administrator “ad omnia” of the Diocese of Esteli is in charge of the administration of its material assets in the absence of the actual apostolic administrator, exiled Bishop Rolando Alvarez.

Vatican News reported that the names of the priests who arrived in Rome on Aug. 7 are Ulises Vega, Edgar Sacasa, Víctor Godoy, Jairo Pravia, Silvio Romero, Harvin Torres, and Marlon Velázquez.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.