The Central American Province of the Society of Jesus acknowledged on Aug. 15 the anniversary of the loss of the Central American University in Managua, Nicaragua, “with deep pain and indignation, but with unshakeable hope and an unwavering demand for justice.” They noted that “the unpunished and unjustified confiscation” of the university has done “inestimable damage to the scientific and cultural heritage of Nicaragua and continues to be a grave violation of the right to education of thousands of young people who were studying at the UCA.”
The university was seized by the Sandinista government last year as part of a widespread clampdown on the Jesuits and the broader Nicaraguan church. The Jesuits deplored the loss of the university’s “research centers, libraries, collections of historical documents, catalogs of natural resources, properties, and financial resources” in a statement today.
The Jesuits said the university’s confiscation was not only a violation of the society’s property rights but “a serious violation of the inalienable right to due legal process and legitimate defense.” They described the loss of the university as part of a national systematic repression, “which lamentably continues to this day, against any person or institution suspected of not agreeing with the regime, including religious institutions of various denominations.”
The Society urged the Ortega government to “stop the repression, stop committing systematic violations of human rights,” to “release the political prisoners” and to “accept the search for a rational solution in which truth, justice, dialogue, academic freedom, and respect for the rule of law prevail.”
The church has proved to be the last indigenous institution standing against Nicaragua’s increasingly totalitarian government now that Nicaragua’s independent media and political opposition have been neutralized by the Ortega family and the Sandinista government. Led by former Sandinista chief Daniel Ortega and his wife, vice president Rosario María Murillo, the central government first initiated various policies of civic repression in response to student protests in 2018 that were violently suppressed. The brutal treatment of the students—more than 300 were killed—initially provoked more Nicaraguans to oppose Mr. Ortega’s continuing reign.
The Managua government began a vast clampdown on civil freedoms and civic bodies that might stand against it, expelling journalists and shutting down thousands of foreign and domestically based humanitarian and human rights groups. The regime has jailed dissidents, protesters and opposition politicians, exiled priests and critics and shut down or confiscated Catholic education institutions.
Various Catholic orders have been expelled from the country, including the Missionaries of Charity and other orders and entities involved in important humanitarian and direct service efforts in a nation that is among the poorest in Latin America. The government seized the Jesuit university in Managua last summer during a wave of expulsions and property confiscations that targeted Jesuits and other Catholic schools and church-connected nongovernmental organizations across Nicaragua.
In a report released on Aug. 15, “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church?” researcher Martha Patricia Molina Montenegro, winner this year of the State Department’s International Religious Freedom Award, tracked 92 hostile acts against the church in the first six months of 2024. Those acts of government-sponsored aggression included death threats, arrests, robberies, expulsions, interference in liturgical celebrations, attacks on lay people and confiscation or destruction of church property.
She recorded 307 such acts in 2023, a sharp increase from 171 acts of aggression recorded in 2022. According to the report, 245 members of the clergy, men and women religious community members and Catholic lay people are now living in exile, unable to return to Nicaragua or expelled by government officials. The majority of the exiled are native-born Nicaraguans.
In recent days the government has ramped up its suppression of the church, revoking the legal status of the Caritas office in the Diocese of Matagalpa and continuing to arrest priests and lay people in the diocese. Following a pattern used against many other church-related entities, the government found technical problems under registration regulations that were used to justify the revocation of the legal status of Caritas, in effect shutting it down. The social welfare effort’s assets are being transferred to the government.
With the cancellation of Caritas and related entities, the number of non-governmental organizations banned by the government since December 2018 has risen to more than 3,600, with most of their assets transferred to state ownership.
The move against Caritas followed a wave of arrests mostly targeting priests in the Dioceses of Matagalpa and Estelí—where exiled Bishop Rolando Álvarez is bishop and apostolic administrator, respectively. Seven of the detained priests were exiled to the Vatican on Aug. 7, while the Rev. Francisco Tercero is still incarcerated. The whereabouts of Friars Ramón Morras and Salvador de las Calabazas remain unknown.
A deacon and a priest were released, according to independent Nicaraguan media, while another priest voluntarily left the country. Two more priests and two laywomen were subsequently arrested after the seven priests were exiled, according to independent Nicaraguan media.
“The Diocese of Matagalpa practically no longer has any clergy. We’ve been expelled, pressured and forced to flee. Parishes are on their own,” an exiled priest, familiar with the diocese, told OSV News on Aug. 7.
With reporting from OSV News
