In recent days, several media outlets have reported that Nicaragua would expel all nuns as of December 31 due to an ultimatum from the Sandinista regime.
Affirmation: Nicaragua will be left without religious sisters and nuns from December 31
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ACI Prensa’s findings: The news that the Central American country would expel all religious women and nuns began to circulate on December 4, from a post in the X account of the Nicaraguan lawyer and researcher Martha Patricia Molina.
“In these weeks the immigration posts (land border and airport) will be attended by nuns because the dictatorship has given them the ultimatum: ‘You have until December to leave the country.'”
Martha Patricia Molina is the author of the report Nicaragua: A persecuted Church?which is now in its fifth edition and which includes the abuses suffered by members of the Catholic Church since 2018, by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo.
ACI Prensa contacted the researcher to find out more details about the departure of the nuns. Molina regretted that the media had “distorted my information.”
He explained that the ultimatum is for “the congregations that were arbitrarily closed by the Sandinista dictatorship when they canceled the 1,500 organizations” in August 2024.
“It is not for all religious women,” Molina clarified, “because religious congregations that have not been canceled continue and continue doing their work. The only ones harmed are those whose organization was closed by the dictatorship.”
On August 19, 2024, the regime published the Ministerial Agreement No. 38-2024-OSFL in which the Minister of the Interior, María Amelia Coronel Kinloch, “agrees to approve the Cancellation of Legal Personality and Registration of 1,500 Non-Profit Organizations, for failing to comply with the Laws that regulate them.”
The document accuses these organizations of not complying with their obligations, such as not reporting their financial statements “between 01 and up to 35 years,” and indicates that their properties will be transferred “in the name of the State of Nicaragua.”
The congregations that would leave Nicaragua
The congregations whose names appear in the ministerial agreement and whose nuns would leave Nicaragua are the Religious Congregation Mother of the Divine Shepherd, the Congregation of Oblates of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Congregation of Missionary Catechists Lumen Christi, as well as the Congregation of Jesus and Mary Foundation.
The Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd and the Congregation of the Dominican Sisters of Charity of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin also appear, among others.
However, it must be clarified that during these years there have been expulsions of nuns, as well as the Missionaries of Charity.
Verdict: Martha Patricia Molina’s complaint refers to the nuns of the congregations sanctioned in Ministerial Agreement No. 38-2024-OSFL and not to all the nuns who are currently in Nicaragua.
Therefore, we qualify the statement as deceptive.
Eduardo Berdejo
Professional in Social Communication from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Peru, I have more than 20 years of experience in Catholic digital journalism. As part of ACI Prensa I have been sent to cover Pope Francis’ trips to Cuba, Mexico, Colombia and Peru, in addition to the Synodality Synod in the Vatican in 2023.