"Nicaragua’s leftist dictatorship has arrested and exiled priests, banned thousands of religious events, and even prohibited priestly ordinations in some dioceses, among other abuses."
From lifesitenews.com, and written by Emily Mangiaracina Tue Apr 14, 2026 - 4:54 pm EDT: Nicaragua banned Holy Week processions for fourth year as anti-Catholic persecution intensifies - LifeSite
"(LifeSiteNews) — Nicaragua’s communist government has banned Holy Week processions for the fourth year in a row, part of religious freedom violations that have earned it a place in what is referred to as Latin America’s “authoritarian triad.”
“Nicaragua’s regime is cruelly restricting Holy Week processions for the 4th year, constraining celebrations to church grounds and deploying security forces to suppress Christians’ observation of one of their holiest seasons,” Maureen Ferguson of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said upon the release of a report on the repression of religious freedom in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
According to the report, Nicaraguan police today bar outdoor worship events by all except clergy allied with the state and have banned “an estimated 16,500 religious processions since 2018.”
These prohibitions are part of an intensified crackdown on the Catholic Church in the country since 2018, when the participation of some priests in protests against Daniel Ortega’s regime is said to have prompted the dictator to make the Catholic Church his regime’s number one enemy.
Nicaragua’s government has since then unjustly arrested priests, expelled religious congregations, shut down Catholic radio stations, and reportedly banned the ordination of deacons and ordered the shutdown of evangelization-focused social media pages.
The USCIRF report affirms that Nicaragua censors religious leaders by ordering pastors not to talk about certain subjects, “including the economic and political situation in Nicaragua.”
“National police officers establish a visible and intimidating presence around religious buildings, often photographing and recording those present,” the report states. In one example of this intimidation, police entered a church in February 2025 and recorded the Sunday sermon; “they approached the pastor at his home the next day to threaten him to be careful about the content of his preaching, as they were displeased by his message.”
Nicaraguan forces have followed through with retaliation for religious leaders’ speech. Catholic bishops’ criticism of those aligned with the Ortega regime has led to the clerics’ expulsion from the country, such as in the case of Bishop Carlos Herrera of Jinotega, president of the bishops’ conference, who was exiled to Guatemala after chiding a pro-Ortega mayor for blasting music outside of his cathedral during Mass.
Surveillance and the placement of undercover informants for the Ortega regime reportedly takes place in religious associations and seminaries.
The government intimidation can be intense. “Nicaraguan priests and bishops describe being followed 24 hours a day,” states the report.
The Ortega regime also publicly smears the Church and religious groups in an attempt to discredit them. For example, Ortega has called Nicaraguan Catholic prelates “bishops of Satan.” The regime perpetrates other concrete attacks on the Church, such as when it seized in August 2025 “an iconic Catholic school in Jinotepe under claims it was a location where ‘coup-plotters tortured and murdered.’”
While the number of recorded public attacks on the Catholic Church dropped in 2025, “Nicaraguan civil society groups attribute this to fear of reporting abuses,” according to the report.
The government also abuses its legal power by forcing groups receiving any foreign funding to register as “foreign agents” and then giving itself a pretext to seize these groups’ assets or even shut down the organizations entirely.
In January 2025, the Ortega announced it would be shutting down 15 religious organizations, including the Foundation of Contemplative Dominican Nuns. “Since 2018, the Nicaraguan government has canceled the legal status of over 5,400 organizations, many affiliated with the Catholic Church but also some belonging to Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Baptist traditions. Targeted groups lose all legal claims to their property, which historically has been transferred to the government,” the report shared.
Nicaragua has forced many of its perceived enemies into exile, including by withdrawing citizenship, in at least 450 cases since early 2023. In the case of Catholic clergy, it has most notably expelled the bishops of the Dioceses of Jinotega, Siuna, Matagalpa, and Estelí.
Recently, the Nicaraguan government banned the ordination of priests and deacons in these four dioceses.
Three priests in exile contacted by ACI Prensa recently agreed that “the Lord continues to raise up courageous young men” who discern the priesthood, despite the religious persecution in the country.
“Even though the government wants to prevent priestly ordinations, there have been ways in which the Church, the bishops, have managed and sought to make them happen without the government noticing. This demonstrates the Church’s resourcefulness in the face of adversity, how it reinvents itself, how it continues to evangelize,” one of the priests said.
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