"Church for jail" for the Nazarenes of Nicaragua: Ortega prohibits Holy Week processions

A procession during Palm Sunday in Nicaragua in 2016. Europa Press/Contact/Kobby Dagan (Europa Press/Contact/Kobby Daga)

The image of Jesús Nazareno could not leave the El Calvario church in Nandaime, a southern municipality in the department of Granada, this February 24, the first Friday of Lent.

The five processions of the Via Crucis, in addition to all those of Holy Week, have been prohibited by the authorities of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.

The decision not only affects this temple, whose parish priest was the first religious arrested and convicted by Sandinismo during the religious persecution suffered by Catholicism, but also all the parishes in Nicaragua.

Various churches in the country communicated on their Facebook profiles and group chats the prohibition of taking the Stations of the Cross to the streets, without making a big fuss for fear that the parish priests could be arrested.

"The vicar general informed us that the Stations of the Cross by order of the Police will be done around the block [of the church]," said priest Julián Duarte of the Guadalupe church in Chinandega at the end of a mass.

“We are going to pray, to do pious acts;

No comments for the love of God, please," the priest asked the faithful.

"The Stations of the Cross by order of the police will take place around the block... No comments for the love of God", words of Julián Duarte, parish priest of the Guadalupe church, Chinandega.@radiodarioni pic.twitter.com/IrXHG5oFwR

— Radio Darío (@radiodarioni) February 24, 2023

Limiting the Via Crucis processions is another blow to the Catholic faith of Nicaragua, the majority religion, in the midst of a fierce persecution that includes the 26-year sentence against Bishop Rolando Álvarez, exiled priests and stripped of their nationality, paramilitary harassment of the temples and direct attacks of President Daniel Ortega.

Six days ago, the Sandinista caudillo attacked the Catholic Church, the institution with the highest approval in the country, according to polls.

"The priests, the bishops and the popes are a mafia," said the president.

“Look how many crimes [Catholic religious] have committed.

Crimes for having absurd regulations.

Let them comment on the financial field, for embezzling millions.

We carry those horrors of those who present themselves as saints," Ortega said.

And he added furiously: “What respect can I have for the bishops I have met in Nicaragua, if they were Somocistas?

He was a child when the funeral of [Anastasio] Somoza [García, in 1956] happened and the bishops buried Somoza as a prince of the Church, that is to say as if he were a cardinal of the Catholic Church”.

The authorities' decision completely limits Holy Week processions, the most solemn and crowded on the Catholic calendar in Nicaragua.

In some cases, the police allowed the first Via Crucis of Lent to be celebrated in the atriums of the churches, but in others they were more prohibitive: they forced the rite to be carried out inside the temples, according to multiple reports collected by EL PAÍS .

"Going out onto the streets is not contemplated for two reasons: due to police presence from time to time and because of the insinuations of the State of Nicaragua," said a priest from the north of the country on condition of anonymity.

The Santa María de los Ángeles parish, in Managua, reported on the first Friday of Lent that they were visited by police inspector Orlando Cano, who informed them of the ban.

“There is an order that if the temple wants to go out in procession, first the priest must ask the police chief of his district for authorization.

It is the order”, said a member of the pastoral of that church.

Imposing “church for jail” on saints is not new under the Ortega-Murillo regime.

The tactic began to be implemented in September 2022, when the police cordoned off the two main churches in the city of Masaya, one of the strongholds of the 2018 social protests. The massive processions of the patron saints San Miguel Arcángel and San Jerónimo were not celebrated. , although the faithful gathered around the temples, neutralizing the officers of the special forces.

"For security reasons"

Since last Ash Wednesday, the Police began visiting different temples in Managua and other departments to verbally notify that permits for Lent and Holy Week processions were prohibited.

According to ecclesiastical sources, the armed institution attributed the measure to "security reasons."

So far, neither the high hierarchy of the Catholic Church nor the Police itself have issued a statement making the ban official.

However, a communication source from the Catholic Church reported that the order given by Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes in this regard is that they "obey".

"The Ortega-Murillos have the heartless and illogical intention of annihilating the country's Catholic faith, because they know that the Catholic Church is the only credible, respected and loved institution that, in the light of the gospel, is announcing and denouncing all the arbitrariness and evils that the dictatorship commits”, said the lawyer and researcher in exile Martha Patricia Molina.

She is the author of a report titled "Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church?"

and collects that, between April 2018 and October 2022, the Sandinista regime carried out 396 attacks against Catholicism.

The most palpable being the repression of priests and bishops, which includes sieges, imprisonments, expulsions, criminal proceedings, and closure of Catholic-administered media outlets.

Bishop Silvio Baéz, exiled in Miami and who was also stripped of his nationality by the Ortega-Murillo regime, said in his first Lenten homily on February 26 that "power is a deadly idol, before which tyrants prostrate themselves."

"An idol to which they offer the freedom and hope of the peoples as a sacrifice. The devil reveals to Jesus that power, riches and worldly glories are his and that he gives them to those who worship him. Therefore, whoever He has worldly power, he is a minister of the devil. Those who use power to exclude, subdue and oppress serve the devil and live on their knees before the devil."

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