The Catholic Church is being repressed at the hands of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. His government placed under house arrest the Bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando José Álvarez, on August 3, shut down Church radio stations on August 1, and has banned religious protests and processions. In March, it forced into exile the papal nuncio to Nicaragua.
Ortega represses the Catholic Church to secure the rule of himself and his party. He has been president since 2007 and won a fourth consecutive term in 2021, an election in which he faced no political opposition and had indeed arrested his opponents. The Catholic Church is the remaining civil society organization that retains, or struggles to retain, freedom from the state, as this piece in the New York Times explains well:
But as Mr. Ortega, 76, last year began to purge the few remaining dissidents in politics, civil society, news media, academia, business and culture, the Catholic churches in this deeply religious Central American nation assumed an increasingly pivotal role. More than sources of spiritual solace, they became the only places in the country where citizens could speak their minds and listen to speakers who were not appointed by the state.
Mr. Ortega’s already authoritarian rule tipped into systematic repression last year when it became clear that he lacked a popular mandate to win another term in the general elections held in November. To retain power, he turned the country into a one-party state, jailing all opposition presidential candidates and then moving to silence all other dissident voices. Now, with the last influential clergyman silenced, Nicaragua has reached a milestone, according to human rights activists, former officials and priests: cementing its position as a totalitarian state.
In the book God’s Century (2011), coauthored by Monica Duffy Toft, Timothy Samuel Shah, and myself, we advanced the thesis of late political scientist Samuel Huntington that the Catholic Church was a motor of the wave of global democratization that began in 1974. The Church opposed dictatorships most powerfully in countries such as Poland and the Philippines in the 1980s, where it had preserved independence from state in authority in its governance, finances, personnel, and other aspects of authority, and was co-opted by authoritarian and violent states such as Rwanda and Argentina, where it was weaker and far less independent. Doubtless Ortega perceives this. He must control the Church, he reasons, if he is to remain in power unopposed.
Exemplary among global responses has been that of Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna, Italy. Here is his view as reported in an article in the National Catholic Register.
Cardinal Zuppi underlined that “with dismay and incredulity we receive news of the harsh persecutions that the people of God and their pastors are undergoing because of fidelity to the Gospel of justice and peace.”
“In recent weeks we have followed with concern the decisions taken by the government against the Christian community, also implemented through the use of force by the military and police forces. Lately we have learned of the arrest of H.E. Msgr. Rolando José Álvarez Lagos, Bishop of Matagalpa, together with other people, including priests, seminarians and laity,” the cardinal said.
It is a “very serious act, which does not leave us insensitive and which induces us to keep our attention high on what happens to these brothers of ours in the faith,” and which took place in circumstances and contexts that “arouse particular apprehension not only because they take it aims at Christians who are prevented from the legitimate exercise of their beliefs, but because they are part of a moment in which the most elementary human rights appear to be strongly threatened.”
Italy’s bishops, therefore, join “the requests of the international community, which have also found a voice in the recent declarations of the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres. We therefore ask the political leaders to guarantee freedom of worship. and of opinion not only to the exponents of the Catholic Church, but to all citizens.”
Nicaragua reminds us that the persecution of Christians, and religious freedom in general, continues to be violated around the world. The Under Caesar’s Sword project serves as a forum for educating the world about the persecution of Christians.
This coming Monday, August 29th, begins a six-week online course, “Under Caesar’s Sword: Christians in Response to Persecution,” taught by The Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. It is not too late to sign up!
This past summer, Notre Dame student Joseph London updated the Country Profiles of Under Caesar’s Sword, which describe persecution in 25 countries and serve as a resource for education. The profiles were first developed around 2015-2017 and so have needed to be updated. The countries alas do not include Nicaragua, whose persecution was not acute in 2014, when Under Caesar’s Sword’s research scholars were recruited to study designated countries first hand.