Fr. José María Tojeira, exprovincial of the Jesuits of Central America, died this Friday, September 5. Nicaraguan Bishop Silvio Báez, thanked his “closeness and solidarity with Nicaragua” and gave his condolences to the members of the Society of Jesus.
“With deep regret we communicated that this morning he died, in Guatemala City, P. José María Tojeira, SJ, Jesus’ companion who gave his life to the tireless service of the Central American territory. We entrust his soul to the hug of God,” said the Jesuits in his account of his account of his account X This Friday.
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“I raise my prayer accompanying in his encounter with the Lord Jesus to the dear Father José María Tojeira Sj. I appreciate his closeness and solidarity with Nicaragua and express my felt condolences to the company of Jesus,” he wrote Mons. Silvio Báez, Auxiliary Bishop of Managuaexiled since 2019.
I raise my prayer accompanying in his encounter with the Lord Jesus to the dear Father José María Tojeira SJ. I appreciate its closeness and solidarity with Nicaragua and express my felt condolences to the Society of Jesus. @JesuitasESP pic.twitter.com/KxTcOkhuxj
– Silvio José Báez (@silviojbaez) September 5, 2025
Father Tojeira was the spokesman of the Jesuits when, in mid -August 2023, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in Nicaragua expropriated the Central American University (UCA), the house of the elderly Jesuits in the Nicaraguan capital and canceled the legal status of the order, transferring all its assets to the State.
On August 30, the priest granted a Interview with Ewtn Newsin which he pointed out that the more abuse the dictatorship commits, the faster his fall will be.
“The more abuses commit, the faster that government is going to end in Nicaragua. It is the law of life with dictatorships. The more they abuse power, the sooner they fall,” said the priest.
José María Tojeira Pelayo was born in Vigo (Spain) in 1947. He arrived in Honduras, in Central America, in 1969, where he was pastor in different parishes and helped the local peasants.
In 1985 he was sent to El Salvador as the superior of the Jesuit students of theology. He was provincial of Central America between 1988 to 1995. During his term the murder of six Jesuit priests occurred at the José Simeón Cañas American University (UCA) in 1989 and had to lead the trial against the members of the Salvadoran armed forces that were sentenced as material authors of the crime.
He was later rector of the UCA in El Salvador between 1997 and 2010.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.