Ortega Intensifies Nicaragua’s War on Christians

For more than 40 days this summer, virtually no one outside Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian government in Nicaragua could say with certainty where 80-year-old Catholic Bishop Juan Abelardo Mata was, whether he was free, or even whether he was safe.

Then, suddenly, he appeared on television.

Mata, the retired bishop of Estelí and a longtime critic of Ortega’s socialist government, had been detained in late June after participating in a religious ceremony where he prayed for “the persecuted Church in Nicaragua” and for Bishop Rolando Álvarez, another prominent cleric previously imprisoned by the regime.

As concerns mounted, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) said Mata had been held incommunicado and that there was no independently verifiable information about his health. On August 11, the commission asked the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to take emergency action to protect Mata and four people close to him, citing an “extreme and urgent” risk of irreparable harm.

One day later, Mata resurfaced in an interview conducted by Adolfo Pastrán, a government-aligned journalist.

Smiling as he walked around his residence, Mata said he was doing “well” and that two relatives had visited him. But the recording date was unknown, and the carefully controlled appearance did little to quiet suspicions about whether the elderly bishop was genuinely free.

Two Nicaraguan priests living in the United States described the interview as a “staged show.” A senior priest identified as Father Julio, who requested anonymity for security reasons, said skepticism was widespread.

“People suspected the authorities orchestrated it,” he said.

Mata’s strange disappearance and reappearance is only the latest chapter in one of the Western Hemisphere’s most sweeping campaigns against Christianity – a campaign that, despite occasional international coverage, has received remarkably little sustained attention from mainstream outlets.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has described Ortega and his wife and co-president, Rosario Murillo, as carrying out a “total crackdown” on religious freedom through arrests, exile, surveillance, confiscation of religious property, and restrictions on worship. Its latest report details a system in which priests may be required to seek police permission to travel between municipalities while pastors are warned against criticizing the government in sermons.

Independent Nicaraguan researcher Martha Patricia Molina, who has documented the persecution for years, says at least 309 priests, nuns, and other religious figures have been exiled, expelled, or prevented from returning to Nicaragua. Her research has also documented at least 43 Catholic Church properties confiscated by the government.

Perhaps most extraordinary is what has happened to public worship.

According to Molina’s latest figures, the government prohibited nearly 29,000 Catholic processions and acts of popular piety between 2019 and April 2026, including more than 6,000 during Lent this year alone. La Prensa, a major newspaper in the country, reported that those figures do not include every local parish activity that has been restricted, meaning the true number could be even higher.

“The church in Nicaragua faces an exceptionally difficult time confronting persecution and intimidation,” a Vatican source familiar with Latin America said. The source described the campaign as increasingly “sophisticated,” reaching beyond priests and bishops into the daily lives of ordinary believers.

“It is now affecting all generations, old and young,” he said.

The roots of Ortega’s hostility toward the Church stretch back at least to Nicaragua’s mass anti-government demonstrations in 2018. As security forces cracked down, Catholic churches sheltered protesters, clergy provided humanitarian assistance, and bishops attempted to mediate between Ortega and his opponents. Contemporary reporting documented how the Church’s role transformed it into one of the few institutions capable of challenging the regime’s dominance.

Ortega has never forgotten it.

No case better illustrates that vendetta than Bishop Rolando Álvarez. An outspoken critic of the government’s repression, Álvarez was convicted of treason, stripped of his citizenship, and sentenced to more than 26 years in prison. In January 2024, Nicaragua finally expelled him to the Vatican along with 18 other clergy and seminarians.

Now Mata has become another symbol of a government seemingly determined to make clear that even an elderly bishop is not beyond its reach.

Yet his peculiar television appearance also raises an intriguing question: Why did the regime feel compelled to show him at all?

The dictatorship still controls Nicaragua’s political institutions, security apparatus, and much of civil society. In July, Ortega went so far as to declare that Nicaragua would no longer permit elections that might allow his opponents to take power – a remarkable statement that Reuters reported effectively eliminated an electoral challenge to his rule.

But outside the regime, Nicaraguans are already discussing what might come next. Fifteen opposition organizations have now backed a transition plan proposing a provisional government, restoration of basic freedoms, a constituent assembly, and free elections within two years of a democratic transition.

Father Julio believes the government’s decision to produce Mata for the cameras is significant. In earlier years, he suggested, Ortega might simply have ignored demands for answers.

“It seems they have begun to realize their rule is not eternal,” the priest said.

Perhaps that is wishful thinking. Dictatorships can survive far longer than their opponents expect. Still, after years of persecuting priests, shuttering religious institutions, confiscating Church property, and driving hundreds of religious figures into exile, Ortega’s government suddenly decided it was important for the world to see an elderly bishop smiling for the cameras.

The larger question is whether this growing scrutiny will translate into meaningful pressure on Ortega’s government. After years of escalating repression against the Catholic Church, even small signs that the regime feels compelled to answer its critics are worth watching.