Opinion: The Vatican and Biden administration must put pressure on Ortega

While the United States Mission to the Organization of American States (OAS) published a resolution in October rejecting the “repressive measures by the Nicaragua Government” against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, its statements have done nothing to end the campaign of terror against the Catholic Church and her priests. In fact, the persecution of priests has escalated. Reuters reported on December 30th that, in the previous week, Nicaraguan police and paramilitaries have arrested and detained 12 priests, including an archdiocesan vicar. And CNA reports that there are “two bishops, 15 priests, and two seminarians in custody,” with some arrests taking place on the final day of 2023.

These latest arrests are just the latest in a growing number of “arbitrary arrests, imprisonment, and expulsion from Nicaragua of priests and nuns without due process” under the brutal dictatorship of Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.

The mass arrest of priests during Christmas week follows escalating assaults on the Church and her institutions in Nicaragua. On August 15, 2023, the Jesuit Order reported that they received a judicial order, notifying them that the government had seized all the property, buildings, and bank accounts of the Jesuit-run University of Central America. Claiming that it was a “center of terrorism,” Ortega is attempting to imprison any individual or close any organization—especially those affiliated with the Catholic Church—he sees as threatening his attempt to crush all dissent in his quest for total control of the country.

In February 2023, Bishop Rolando Jose Alvarez Lagos of Matagalpa was sentenced to more than 26 years in prison for treason, undermining national integrity and spreading false news.  Last Spring, the Nicaragua government froze the bank accounts of three of the Roman Catholic Church’s nine dioceses in the country, and in April, the Holy See closed its nunciature in Managua after the Nicaraguan government proposed suspending diplomatic relations.

Although it is not just the Catholic Church that has drawn the ire of President Ortega and his wife—in 2022, the government in Nicaragua has closed down and outlawed more than five hundred Nicaraguan non-profit organizations like Caritas, and foundations—they have been especially harsh on those organizations, such as the Catholic Church, which have defended and demanded respect for human rights in Nicaragua foundations. According to the OAS, “Over the past two years, Ortega and Murillo have revoked the broadcasting licenses of three television stations and 10 radio stations operated by the Catholic Church. They also shuttered the only television channel that broadcast local and foreign evangelical programming.”

The Catholic Church in Nicaragua poses a threat to the brutal dictatorship in Nicaragua because many Church leaders have been vocal in their criticisms of the repression and persecution of the Church and her people during the brutal dictatorship of Ortega. Much of this open criticism by the Church began during the major uprisings by the people in 2018, when the Catholic Church provided protection to protesters attempting to flee arrest and persecution. Church leaders attempted to mediate a national dialogue, but it was unsuccessful and brought attention to the role of the Church in fighting the oppression of the people. More than 350 protestors died after the violent suppression by police and paramilitaries led by Ortega in the 2018 protests.

It is difficult to understand why Pope Francis has not spoken out more forcefully about all of this. On New Year’s Day, Vatican News reported that Pope Francis “shared his concern” for Nicaragua as he prayed the Angelus on the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God: “I follow with deep concern what is happening in Nicaragua, where Bishops and priests have been deprived of their freedom.” It seems evident that this situation calls for more than “concern” from Pope Francis. Other than closing the nunciature in Nicaragua, the Vatican is apparently not involved in negotiations to help release the priests and bishops currently imprisoned.

The Biden administration has also been silent on much of this, other than offering asylum to migrants from Nicaragua. Rather than addressing the brutal dictatorship and the attacks on religious freedom, President Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken have focused on the high-profile political prisoners—including some of the revolutionary Sandinistas from the past who have been imprisoned under the Ortega regime—rather than the priests and bishops who are disappearing at an alarming rate.

One of those newly released political prisoners, whose release was negotiated and facilitated by the Biden administration, is Dora Maria Tellez. She is a Nicaraguan scholar who had planned to teach at Harvard back in 2005 until her visa was denied by the Bush State Department because of her terrorist activity. Known as “Commander II” during the 1978 revolution in Nicaragua, when she was one of 25 revolutionaries who dressed as waiters and took over Nicaragua’s National Assembly, Tellez served as the political commander in the takeover of the national palace. In an impressive show of force, Tellez held 2,000 government officials hostage in a two-day standoff. She later led guerrillas to rise up in the city of Leon. After the revolution, Tellez served as Minister for Health in the Sandinista government.

But, as often happens with left-wing revolutionaries, the quest for control continues to grow; in 1995, Tellez grew out of favor with Ortega when his lust for power began to view Tellez as a threat.  According to The Nation, Tellez began her own Sandinista movement with other prominent former revolutionary leaders calling it the Sandinista Renovation Movement—and claiming it was a “democratic Sandinista Party”. The new party was outlawed by Ortega in 2008 after he became president again. In June, 2021, Ortega had her imprisoned along with several presidential candidates who he viewed as competition for his presidential re-election. After 20 months of imprisonment in Managua’s El Chipote prison, Tellez was one of 222 political prisoners who were released on February 9, 2023, and flown—at the United States taxpayers expense—on a charter flight to Washington, DC, after the United States agreed to provide asylum to the exiles.

It is time for the Biden administration—and Pope Francis—to expend a similar effort to negotiate the same kind of release of the bishops and priests currently incarcerated in Nicaragua’s brutal dictatorship. Unlike Tellez, Nicaragua’s most famous female guerilla leader—whose name has magically been deleted from the terrorist watch list—these priests and bishops only wanted peace and worked only for peace.