Nicaragua dictatorship prohibited more than 16,500 processions and perpetrated 1010 attacks against the Catholic Church

The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in Nicaragua prohibited more than 16,500 processions and acts of piety in recent years, and has perpetrated 1010 attacks against the Catholic Church.

This is indicated by the seventh delivery of the report Nicaragua: a persecuted church of the lawyer and investigator in exile, Martha Patricia Molina, who was released this August 27.

On the prohibition of processions, the expert explained that this was exacerbated since 2022 and the dictatorship imposed it throughout the country year after year since then, but does not consider all the temples or chapels of the parishes, which only in Managua are 400. “Then the figure presented by the study could be at least three or four times greater than what is being recorded,” he said.

In an interview with Ewtn News, Molina explained that so far this year 2025 only 32 aggressions of the dictatorship against the Church have been recorded, a figure that could be much greater.

The complaint of attacks against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua

The investigator said that there are a number of factors that prevent this type from allegations: “The laity are terrified that the members of the Council of Citizen Power and the paramilitaries, which are agencies assigned to the dictatorship, do them any damage if they decide to denounce.”

In addition, Catholic priests “are prohibited from making any complaint, and if by chance, any aggression is exposed in the media, since simply (the dictatorship) denies it.”

“Another of the negative aspects we find, and that makes it possible for these attacks not to be recorded, is that there is no presence of independent media in the country,” said the expert.

An example of this, he said, was the recent confiscation of the San José de las Hermanas Josefinas School in Jinotepe: “When people made that complaint, several authorities, including Catholics, said it was false. But after two days that dictator Rosario Murillo reported the confiscation, because it was already learned that what was being denounced was true.”

The researcher also indicated that her study “has documented the arbitrary closure of 13 universities and education centers or training centers”, and said that “what the dictatorship is doing is first to prohibit students who remained in the confiscated school that withdraw their enrollment”, since if it does “you will have some kind of reprisal.”

Molina also told Ewtn news that these schools or educational centers then use them to “indoctrinate young people, children to see the figure of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo because as the saviors of Nicaragua.”

So far from 2025, he continued, “24 media and 75 non -profit organizations have been arbitrarily closed at the same time” and the dictatorship has confiscated 36 properties, despite the fact that the Political Constitution of Nicaragua, “still the recently reformed in the year 2025 prohibits this figure.”

“The surveillances are permanent to priests and bishops. Some of them are even persecuted 24 hours,” he continued.

“The clergy meetings made by bishops with the priests remain constantly monitored by the police where they come to take photographs and videos to the religious who attend and also (the forces of the Orteguistas order) must be absolutely found out of everything that is spoken in these meetings.”

Nicaragua and the Vatican

After commenting that the dictatorship has not returned the bank accounts confiscated to the Catholic Church and that “high fines and high charges are being imposed on religious buildings”, the lawyer referred to the relationship with the Holy See.

The last constitutional reform, he said, “is creating a break between the Nicaraguan Catholic Church and the Vatican State because the dictatorship in this reform included that no type of interference is allowed in these religious activities. So what it means is that the Catholic Church should not have any contact with the Vatican.”

“The relationship between the Vatican State and the Sandinista dictatorship is non -existent. It is known that there is no dialogue, at least openly,” he said.

The meeting of Pope Leo XIV with the bishops of Nicaragua

On the meeting that on Saturday, August 23, Pope Leo XIV maintained with three exiled bishops from Nicaragua, the researcher expressed her joy and stressed: “Who better than these bishops who have been banished and denationalized to attest to how the persecution that is being developed in Nicaragua is.”

The Holy Father received Mons. Silvio Báez in the Vatican, whom he confirmed as auxiliary bishop of Managua; Mons. Isidoro Mora, Bishop of Siuna; and Mons. Carlos Enrique Herrera, Bishop of Jinotega and president of the Nicaraguan Episcopate.

“The Pope needs true, objective information and I think that these three bishops who attended this private audience with Pope León put a lot of interest in informing what is being suffered in Nicaragua and also what we are living, the migrant community, whether Catholic or not, in other countries, as a result of this damage that is causing the Sandinista dictatorship in the country,” he added.

“There are aggressions that cannot be published”

Martha Patricia Molina told Ewtn News that she also has a parallel record of “aggressions that cannot be published in the media or in studies for the fear that people who have leaked the information have”, although these do make them reach “the authorities of some countries that monitor freedom, to attacks on religious freedom and also those human rights organizations in the OAS, in the UN, so that they really know about the voice of the victims. It is what is happening. ”

After denouncing that in these days “the seminar that was confiscated to the diocese of Matagalpa (in January of this year) is being destroyed, destroyed, a place where the future priests were formed that were going to serve the diocese of Matagalpa”, Molina made an order to the international community.

The lawyer asked to remain attentive to Nicaragua to finally be able to “leave this criminal dictatorship, because I do not see how in Nicaragua the people can do some kind of protest because the dictatorship only recipes the people who claim human rights the jail, exile or cemetery.”

You can access the report HERE.