Denver Newsroom, Jun 10, 2022 / 14:45 pm
In less than four years, the Catholic Church in Nicaragua has been the target of 190 attacks and desecrations, including a fire in the Managua Cathedral, as well as police harassment and persecution of bishops and priests under the regime of Daniel Ortega, the country’s president, a new investigative report shows.
The report, “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church? (2018-2022),” by attorney Martha Patricia Molina Montenegro, a member of the Pro-Transparency and Anti-Corruption Observatory, notes that “the role of the Catholic Church has been fundamental in the crisis of human rights violations that Nicaragua is facing.”
In response to the Catholic Church’s role, the lawyer’s report shows that the regime of Ortega, who has governed Nicaragua continuously since 2007 along with his wife Rosario Murillo (as First Lady and now vice president), "initiated an indiscriminate persecution against bishops, priests, seminarians, religious, lay groups and towards everything that has a direct or indirect relationship with the Catholic Church.”
The document points to the crisis that broke out in April 2018 with protests in Nicaragua over a series of reforms to the social security system, which increased the contribution of companies and employees, as well as deductions for retirees.