At least 12 priests have been arrested in recent days in a new wave of detentions targeting Catholic Church clergy in Nicaragua, according to a human rights NGO operating from exile in Costa Rica.
“In the last 48 hours, there has been a repressive escalation against priests of the Catholic Church” in the Matagalpa department, in the northern part of the country, stated the Colectivo Nicaragua Nunca Más in a communiqué.
“Several parishes have been besieged, and at least 12 priests have been arbitrarily detained, some of whom are now missing and in a state of enforced disappearance,” the organization specified.
On Thursday and Friday, Nicaraguan police carried out operations in parishes of the dioceses of Matagalpa and Estelí (north), reported Martha Patricia Molina, a lawyer and researcher on church-related issues, currently exiled in the United States, via social media platform X.
Nicaraguan human rights activist Haydee Castillo, also exiled in the United States, stated on X that “last night Matagalpa was besieged by police and paramilitary forces.” The Nicaraguan government has not commented on these reports.
President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, claim that the Church supported the 2018 protests against the government, which resulted in over 300 deaths according to the UN, and which Managua considers an attempted coup sponsored by Washington.
Murillo has described the clergy as “children of the devil” or “agents of evil” who engage in “spiritual terrorism.” “This is the largest crackdown since December 2023,” when another dozen priests were detained, the collective stated. In January, about thirty religious figures were released and sent to the Vatican.
A week ago, a group of United Nations experts denounced that the Nicaraguan government has maintained “systematic” attacks against the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations since the 2018 protests.
From April 2018 to March 2024, the group documented “73 cases of arbitrary detentions of members of the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations,” although they noted that “the total number could be higher.”
