From our Bureau of Socialist Social Justice with considerable assistance from our Liberation Theology in Action Bureau
Priests and monks are not the only targets in Dictator Daniel Ortega’s war on the Catholic Church. Nuns, too, are facing persecution, although their plight has not received as much attention from news media as that of the male clerics. Some nuns have had no choice but to reluctantly leave the country, such as the Missionaries of Charity in the photo above, but others are pledging to stay despite the severe hardships they face. Read the story below for the gruesome details.
From Global Sisters Report
All but four of the 26 Catholic congregations recently stripped of their legal status in Nicaragua were women religious, but a sister inside the country told Global Sisters Report Aug. 27 that even the latest large-scale government crackdown won’t shake their resolve to help people and provide them hope. She also urged Catholics outside Nicaragua to tell others about their plight.
“Those of us here, because of the situation, we can’t say anything. We can’t publish anything. We absolutely cannot share any information the way a normal person would in a normal country,” she told GSR. “But that’s something [the rest of the church] can do.”
GSR is withholding the sister’s name for her safety and that of her congregation.
The government’s actions have the potential to negatively affect the health of Nicaraguans, their access to food and other services for the elderly and poor, which many women religious provided via their ministries, not to mention their contributions to Catholic schools that now have been taken over by the government, she said. But women religious will remain with the Nicaraguan people no matter what happens, and won’t allow anyone to take away the faith and hope that remains, she said.
“What’s most important right now is to create networks of solidarity among us and be close to one another and help with whatever the other congregations may need,” she said. “And another sentiment that has arisen is to want to remain firm in hope and to live, as we all say, day by day, no matter what happens, until when we can no longer do so.”
The women’s congregations were among 1,500 nonprofits stripped of their legal status in a single day. Among them: Company of Mary, Discalced Carmelites, Oblates of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Trappist sisters, Augustinians, Sisters of Charity of the Good Shepherd, as well as a congregation of Franciscans.
The Aug. 19 closures are part of the ongoing attacks on Nicaragua’s religious and civic life from the increasingly totalitarian regime of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.
When legal status is taken away, the government freezes the organizations’ bank accounts and seizes their properties, the U.S. State Department said in a 2024 report, which also points out that 3,600 other nonprofits in Nicaragua have undergone a similar fate since 2018. Nicaraguan officials said Aug. 19 in the government publication La Gaceta that the nonprofits had “not met their obligations” and accused them of not reporting financial information. Among them were Baptist, Pentecostal and Evangelical groups, but also organizations promoting arts, sports, and culture and Indigenous identity.
A few Catholic congregations on the list already had left the country because of the difficulties of serving in Nicaragua, the sister said. Though many are reeling, sisters are focused on helping Catholics who have lived through the incarceration of priests, the expulsion of bishops, along with sisters, and the erosion of religious life, she said.
Though there’s been more media attention on men’s congregations, such as the Society of Jesus, known as the Jesuits, whose University of Central America in Managua was confiscated in August 2023 and the order’s private property seized, communities of women religious in the country have been hit especially hard.
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The Murillo hag, who’s probably the real power in Nicaragua, reportedly adopted and practices some version of Cuban santería, which is said to be related to her outlandish mode of dress and over-the-top jewelry. In other words, though Nicaragua is Catholic, she’s something else.