MIAMI – Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s administration has targeted at least a bishop and a dozen Roman Catholic priests.
Nicaragua also closed a Catholic-run university and schools. The situation is so dire that Pope Francis used his New Year’s Day address at the Vatican to raise awareness.
“Bishops and priests have been deprived of their freedom,” Francis said in St. Peter’s Square.
During his Christmas Eve homily at St. Mary Cathedral in Miami, Archbishop Thomas Wenski said hundreds of thousands are fleeing Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
Many are finding refuge in South Florida. On Tuesday, Wenski said the situation in Nicaragua was deteriorating.
“The government is persecuting the church and it’s hard to see what the end game of this is,” Wenski said.
Felix Maradiaga, a leader of the Nicaraguan opposition and a former political prisoner, said the religious persecution in Nicaragua is unprecedented and is part of a strategy.
“Ortega is trying to test the U.S. His argument seems to be that the U.S. is not strong enough to do anything real to stop him,” Maradiaga said.
The list of Catholic priests arrested or exiled in Nicaragua continued to get longer. On New Year’s Eve, police officers arrested Rev. Gustavo Sandino in the town of Jinotega.
The list also includes Rev. Pablo Villafranca, Rev. Héctor Treminio, Rev. Carlos Avilés, Rev. Fernando Calero, Rev. Marcos Díaz Prado, and Rev. Isidoro Mora.
On Friday, Silvio José Báez, the exiled auxiliary bishop of Managua, reported on X that Avilés, of the Archdiocese of Managua; Treminio, of Holy Christ Parish; and Calero, of Our Lady of Fatima Parish, had vanished.
“I am outraged by the unjust abduction of three beloved priests,” Báez wrote adding, “the criminal Sandinista dictatorship” was to blame.
Attorney Martha Patricia Molina told reporters that Díaz Prado, of St. Thomas the Apostle Parish, had been detained by authorities. Bishop Isidro Mora, of the Archdiocese of Siuna, was detained last week.
Police officers detained Bishop Rolando Álvarez for treason and sedition in 2022. In February, a judge sentenced Álvarez to 26 years in prison. Pope Francis referred to the Sandinista leadership as a “gross dictatorship”
Nicaragua suspended relations with the Vatican and the Ortega-Murillo family pushed to have control over the appointment of bishops or cardinals, the Catholic News Agency reported.
They link the priests to the protests of 2018 that resulted in at least 100,000 exiled, 1,600 detainees, 2,000 injured, and 355 dead, according to the Associated Press.
Wenski said Nicaragua’s dictatorship was “off the rails.”