Nicaragua Orders All Catholic Nuns Out of the Country

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Posted on 01/15/2025 3:18:16 AM PST by Cronos

In its latest attack on religious organizations, the Nicaraguan government has ordered the expulsion of all remaining Catholic nuns from the country.

According to exiled human rights lawyer Martha Molina and a report by La Croix International, the nuns had “until December to leave the country.”

“The nuns have already been banned from working in nonprofit organizations, now all their property is being confiscated, and most of them have already left Nicaragua,” Molina said.

This banishment is the latest in a series of assaults by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega against religious organizations and NGOs, especially those connected to the Catholic Church.

Since 2018, 245 Catholic clergy members have been expelled from the country, including two high-ranking bishops earlier this year. In August, the Jesuit religious order was banned, and its assets were seized before dissolving the entire Anglican diocese a month later and seizing its assets. In November, priests were barred from ministering to the sick in public hospitals.

While being a primary target of Ortega’s government, religious organizations have not been the only target. Earlier this year, the Nicaraguan government was internationally condemned for canceling the legal status of more than 1,500 nonprofits and NGOs in the country in August, including hundreds of Catholic and Protestant groups and churches.

“Under the leadership of President Ortega and Vice-President Murillo, the government has made clear its intention to totally eradicate all independent actors in the country,” said Anna Strangl, head of advocacy for CSW, back in August. “The social impact of this move, in terms of how it will affect the day-to-day lives of men, women, and children who interact with, and in some cases depend on, the programs of the canceled organizations, is impossible to quantify.”

Targeting nuns has long been a modus operandi of the Ortega regime in its persecution of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, where Catholics make up for 58.5 percent of the 6.5 million inhabitants. Earlier, the Ortega regime had expelled the Missionaries of Charity – the congregation Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta founded – accusing the nuns who work for the poorest of the poor in the country since 1988 of “money laundering, financing of terrorism and financing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

Ongoing repression This latest move against the nuns comes soon after the November 13 arrest and expulsion of Bishop Carlos Enrique Herrera Gutiérrez of Jinotega, president of the Bishops’ Conference of Nicaragua, and the ban on Catholic priests from carrying out their ministry to the sick in public hospitals.

Following the expulsion of the apostolic nuncio in 2022, Bishop Rolando Alvarez as well as other priests were deported to the Vatican in January 2024. Between April 2018 and August of this year, 245 clergy were forced into exile or expelled, according to Molina.

The powerful Catholic Church has for some time been at loggerheads with Ortega's regime. Ortega, a one-time Marxist guerrilla, ruled Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990 without interruption and returned to power in 2007. Rosario Murillo, the First Lady and Ortega's wife, has been the country's vice president since 2017. Ortega has attacked the Catholic Church and priests who criticize the regime's repression, crimes, and violations of rights and freedoms and because bishops have exhorted people “to exercise their right to peacefully demonstrate on the basis of civic and evangelical values”.

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1 posted on 01/15/2025 3:18:16 AM PST by Cronos

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