Miami archbishop, top U.S. diplomat decry persecution of Church in Nicaragua during Holy Week

During Holy Week, the archbishop of Miami, Thomas Wenski, and the second-in-command at the U.S. State Department, Deputy Secretary Christopher Landau, both expressed their concern for the persecution the Church in Nicaragua is suffering at the hands of the dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo.

At the March 31 chrism Mass celebrated at Miami’s St. Mary Cathedral, Wenski noted that during Holy Week 2026, “we find ourselves surrounded by people who desperately need good news.”

After lamenting the current climate of mass deportations in the U.S., violence in Haiti, and repression in Cuba, the prelate turned his attention to the situation facing Nicaraguan Catholics.

“In Nicaragua — a country that has expelled more than 300 bishops, priests, seminarians, and religious in recent years — the regime has banned priestly ordinations in four dioceses,” he pointed out.

With the expulsion of Father José Concepción Reyes Mairena of the Diocese of León in February, the number of religious forced to leave Nicaragua now stands at 309.

Furthermore, the dictatorship has banned priestly and diaconal ordinations in the four dioceses whose bishops are absent because they were forced into exile: Matagalpa, Estelí, Siuna, and Jinotega. The chrism Mass, during which the oil, or chrism, to be used in the sacraments is blessed, was also not celebrated in those dioceses.

In his homily, Wenski encouraged the faithful to prepare for the “Paschal Triduum, the commemoration of the passion, death, and resurrection of Our Lord,” reminding them that “we cannot look upon the crucified Christ without looking at those being crucified before our very eyes and seeing him in them.”

“It struck me as a very prophetic homily,” said Father Edwing Román, a Nicaraguan priest in exile who now serves as vicar of St. Agatha Parish in Miami, told ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News.

“As an exiled Nicaraguan priest, I value and appreciate that a pastor of his stature during such a significant celebration as the chrism Mass in the very midst of Holy Week included our people who are suffering and yearning for their freedom, as well as our persecuted Church,” the priest said.

“Thank you, Archbishop Wenski, for your prophetic defense and for demonstrating once again your closeness to Nicaragua. Your archdiocese has served as a refuge for us and for Bishop Silvio Báez,” he added.

Joining Wenski at the chrism Mass was the auxiliary bishop of Managua, Báez, who went into exile from Nicaragua in 2019 and whose position was confirmed in August 2025 when he was received at the Vatican by Pope Leo XIV. The prelate celebrates Mass and ministers to the community at St. Agatha in Miami.

Román told ACI Prensa that in total four exiled priests participated in the chrism Mass including himself and Father Marcos Somarriba, a parish priest at St. Agatha, along with six other priests who arrived in the United States as children or young adults and a deacon who will soon be ordained a priest, all of Nicaraguan origin.

Dearth of religious freedom in Nicaragua

Also on March 31, Landau denounced the Nicaraguan dictatorship’s stifling of religious freedom in the country.

He noted that “Nicaragua has historically hosted some of the most beautiful and famous processions in the region (for example in Granada and Leon) and I look forward to the day when our Nicaraguan friends reclaim their religious freedom.”

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Martha Patricia Molina, researcher and author of the report “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church,” has documented the thousands of processions and public events banned by the country’s dictatorship in recent years, a phenomenon that is even more severe during this Holy Week.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Source: https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/americas/miami-archbishop-and-us-official-decry-persecution-of-church-in-nicaragua-during-holy-week