Pope Leo XIV received a copy of the report on Thursday Nicaragua: a persecuted church; of the researcher Martha Patricia Molina, who denounces the prohibition of more than 16,500 processions and acts of piety, as well as more than 1,000 attacks of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo against the Catholic Church.
The activist Muriel Sáenz, Nicaraguan by birth who fled the dictatorship in the 1980s and who is now dedicated to helping immigrants in the United States, was the one who delivered the report of Molina to Pope León, within the framework of the Holy Father’s audience with the participants of a congress in the Vatican on migrants and refugees.
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“I feel happy to know that my friend Muriel Sáenz has personally delivered to Pope Leo XIV the study Nicaragua: a persecuted church which is an expression of the Catholic Church and the Nicaraguan people that reflects the persecution of the Sandinista dictatorship against bishops, priests and laity, ”Molina said in statements to ACI Press.
🇻🇦🇳🇮 Registries of the brutal religious persecution in Nicaragua, was given to the vicar of Christ, his holiness Pope Leon XIV.
The Nicaragua study is a persecuted church? of the doctor @mpatricia_m He was delivered by Miurel Saenz de Nicaraguans in the world. pic.twitter.com/wloMQsIM9F
– Catholic Panorama Nicaragua (@panoramacatolic) October 2, 2025
“Repression continues daily and it is important that the Holy See finds out that everything is being documented,” he said.
Martha Patricia Molina also commented that he sent Leo XIV “a letter saying mainly that the Catholic Church of Nicaragua is in total communion with the Pope and united in prayer despite adversities and repression.”
Muriel Sáenz, founder of Nicaraguans in the Texas world, Inc., an institution with which people helps to expose their asylum cases to the immigration courts in the United States, he told ACI Press that he also presented Leo XIV letters of victims of the dictatorship, including priests, and gave him Café de Nicaragua.
“I hope that the Pope will continue with his support in the world complaint, since silence only allows criminals to continue with more and more damage. My intention is also that the world finds out what happens in Nicaragua; where criminals who call forces president and co -president have a whole country – which has no weapons to defend themselves – hands up,” the activist told ACI Press.
“If one does not obey his absurd requirements, he is imprisoned without disgust in subhuman conditions and degrading treatment and torture. Priests and secular people are not exempt from that treatment. I am sure if we get them to leave tomorrow the more than one million Nicaraguans who are watered by the world would return.”
On Saturday, August 23, Pope Leo XIV received three bishops in the Vatican: Mons. Silvio Báez, confirmed by the Holy Father in his position as auxiliary bishop of Managua although he has been exiled since 2019; Mons. Isidoro Mora, Bishop of Siuna, and Mons. Carlos Herrera, president of the Nicaraguan Episcopate, exiled in Guatemala.
“He encouraged me to move forward with my episcopal ministry and confirmed to me as auxiliary bishop of Managua. I appreciate his fraternal reception and his hopeful words,” said Mons. Báez, who currently resides in the United States.
The seventh edition of the report Nicaragua: a persecuted church It was released on August 27, just over a month ago
Molina then explained that the prohibition of processions was exacerbated since 2022 and the dictatorship imposed this measure throughout the country annually, but the report 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 registered,” he warned.
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, considering that the control of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship is increasing more and more.
“The surveillance are permanent to the priests and bishops. Some of them are even persecuted 24 hours,” Molina said then and added: “The clergy meetings made by bishops with the priests remain constantly monitored by the police where they get to take photographs and videos to the religious who attend” and the orteguist forces “have to be absolutely found out of everything.
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.