"The situation has worsened" in Nicaragua following the ban on pastoral missions in the Diocese of León and the tightening of restrictions on religious events held by the Catholic Church in Managua and other cities, according to Martha Patricia Molina, a Nicaraguan researcher in exile.
The dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega and his wife and co-president, Rosario Murillo, maintains "a discourse of reconciliation and love, but their words are not consistent with their actions: They are afraid of the faith and love for God that the people feel," explained the author of the report "Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church" in a Feb. 10 statement to ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News.
The latest installment of Molina's report in August 2025 stated that the dictatorship has perpetrated 1,070 attacks against the Catholic Church and has banned 16,500 processions since 2018, figures that are only increasing.
Molina also stated that "the dictatorship has on occasion sent the police to pull priests out of religious activities or Masses to threaten them; they don't care if the priests are celebrating Mass."
Priests were already subject to various methods of police control including weekly reports of their activities and even demands to see their cellphones to find out with whom they are in contact.
Pastoral missions banned in Diocese of León
On Jan. 21, Molina reported on X that the dictatorship had banned pastoral missions in the Diocese of León, which encompasses the districts of León and Chinandega, led by Bishop René Sándigo, the only bishop in Nicaragua who voted in the 2021 presidential elections in which Ortega was reelected, a process that was described as a farce by international observers.
"Do your business indoors" and stay in "your parishes" was the order the dictatorship gave to the clergy, according to Molina, who explained that this would prevent the diocese from carrying out its mission to "bring the Word of God from house to house."
ACI Prensa contacted the Diocese of León but did not received a response by the time of publication.
Félix Maradiaga, president of the Foundation for Freedom in Nicaragua, warned that the dictatorship "no longer limits itself to harassing religious leaders or canceling processions, but now seeks to silence faith in daily life and punish any spiritual expression that it does not control."
Maradiaga was campaigning to get on the ballot for the 2021 presidential election but was arrested by the Ortega regime. He spent almost two years in jail until he was released and deported to the United States by the dictatorship in 2023.
In a statement to ACI Prensa, Maradiaga pointed out that the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship is "prohibiting popular festivities with deep cultural and religious roots — such as the traditional festival honoring the patron saints of several towns held in Diriamba — and restricting celebrations of great community significance, such as that of the Divine Child in Matagalpa."
It is also "prohibiting door-to-door and house-to-house preaching," which also affects other Christian denominations, he said.
The heavily attended procession and pilgrimage of the Divine Child in Matagalpa — the diocese of Bishop Rolando Álvarez, expelled to Rome in January 2024 after spending 18 months in detention — has been prohibited and restricted by the dictatorship for the past several years.
Traditional 'Meeting of Saints' banned
In her statement to ACI Prensa, Molina noted that the ban on processions imposed by the dictatorship dates back to 2022 and that in 2026, "these religious activities are prohibited again."
She was referring specifically to the prohibition of the "Meeting of Saints" in Diriamba in honor of St. Sebastian, a festival that brings together several images of saints and in which many faithful participate. "The dictatorship only allows the [images of the] saints to be taken out to the church atrium," she lamented.
"The same thing happened with the celebration of the Virgin of Candelaria [in Managua], which was confined to the walls of the church [in her honor] to prevent greater participation from the faithful," the researcher added.
The Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa reported Feb. 7 that this year, for the first time, the dictatorship also canceled the traditional procession of saints — St. John the Baptist, St. Mark, and St. James — at Immaculate Conception of Mary Parish in the town of La Concepción in the Masaya district known as La Concha Parish.
The Sandinista (pro-Ortega) mayor of La Concepción, María Esperanza Mercado Hernández, declared Feb. 9 a holiday and authorized "a multitude of activities to counterbalance the parish's religious festival," the newspaper reported.
Father Edwing Román, a Nicaraguan priest and parochial vicar of St. Agatha Parish in Miami, explained to ACI Prensa that in addition to St. Sebastian in Diriamba, similar prohibitions were issued in St. James Parish in Jinotepe, St. James Parish in Boaco, and St. Jerome Parish in Masaya.
This has happened "in all the departmental capitals (instead of states Nicaragua is divided into departments) and in most of the towns," said the priest, where pro-government municipalities organized secular entertainments instead.
"For greater control, the Sandinista municipalities, with all their organizational apparatus and sound equipment, take over the church atriums to put on their shows: They choose queens, organize open-air dances to distract and sell a façade of joy, but the reality is quite different in every Nicaraguan home," pointed out the priest, who has been living in exile for more than four years.
Regarding religious activities, Román explained that they are carried out "under police surveillance and with plainclothes paramilitaries. The religious images are no longer carried in the arms of the faithful but rather in vehicles escorted by police to prevent people from carrying them."
"The dictatorship fears the crowds (even religious ones) that will take over the city streets," he explained, emphasizing that despite everything, "people hold on to their faith, and the people of God hope in the intercession of their patron saints before Our Lord Jesus Christ."
Nicaragua is in a spiritual battle
Arturo McFields Yescas, former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS) who also lives in exile, told ACI Prensa that "Nicaragua is experiencing a spiritual battle that manifests itself in the earthly realm through repression, persecution, censorship, and spying on people."
"The regime's ferocity against the people's faith is most evident among the Catholic community, but also among the evangelical community, because [the regime's] enemy is the people's faith, their belief in God, because they know that God is stronger than any of these earthly threats," he emphasized.
"But I believe the people of Nicaragua are convinced that this is the Church of God, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. It's a true spiritual battle, and the dictatorship is losing it, thank God," he said.
Unmasking 'the darkness of despotic and cruel power'
In his homily for Sunday Mass at St. Agatha Parish in Miami on Feb. 8, the auxiliary bishop of Managua, Nicaragua, Silvio Báez, who also lives in exile, said "there is much darkness in the world that must be illuminated by the Gospel. We are the light of the world when we unmask the darkness of despotic and cruel power that threatens, intimidates, and oppresses."
The prelate urged the congregation to be "beacons of hope in a world that often seems dominated by darkness. We are called, therefore, to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. That is our mission as disciples of Jesus: to preserve life and give it meaning, to be witnesses of the Gospel, and to illuminate with its light."
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.
