In a December 2 letter addressed to the “pilgrim people of God in Nicaragua,” Pope Francis issued a personal note of support to the Catholics in the country, who have increasingly come under restrictions and persecution from President Daniel Ortega and his dictatorial government.
Francis opened by saying that he had intended to write to the Catholics in Nicaragua “for some time” in order “to reiterate once again the affection I profess for the Nicaraguan people, who have always distinguished themselves by their extraordinary love for God.”
He highlighted that Divine Providence “is the only sure guide” of the world, adding, “Precisely in the most difficult moments, when it becomes humanly impossible to understand what God wants from us, we are called not to doubt His care and mercy. The filial trust you have in Him and also your fidelity to the Church are the two great beacons that illuminate your existence.”
Sending the letter at the start of December, Francis posited it in light of the upcoming feast of the Immaculate Conception, expressing the hope that the great Marian feast “will give you the encouragement you need in times of difficulty, uncertainty and hardship. On this feast, do not forget to abandon yourself to Jesus’ arms, with the invocation Dios primero, ‘God first,’ which you often repeat.”
“I wish to convey to you my closeness and the assurance that I unceasingly pray to the Blessed Virgin to console and accompany you, confirming you in your faith,” Francis wrote. “I want to say it forcefully, the Mother of God does not cease to intercede for you, and we do not cease to ask Jesus to keep you always in His hand.”
Francis closed by recommending devotion to Mary, especially through the recitation of the Rosary, and his prayer composed for the 2025 Jubilee Year.
In recent years, anti-Catholic persecution has steadily increased at the hands of Ortega’s government. His regime has imprisoned and exiled numerous priests and religious. Bank accounts of clergy and ecclesial-linked bodies have been frozen, religious congregations expelled from the country, and a stringent crackdown has been made especially against the Catholic Church.
Most famously, Ortega placed Bishop Rolando Álvarez under house arrest in 2022 and then under police arrest in July 2023.
The bishop – a prominent critic of the regime – was sentenced to 26 years in jail, but after serving many months behind bars was eventually released to the Vatican in January along with Bishop Isidoro del Carmen Mora Ortega and a number of clergy and seminarians.
After Francis described the Nicaraguan government in March 2023 as akin to Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship, Ortega broke off diplomatic ties with the Holy See.
The Vatican’s public commentary on the steadily unfolding crisis in the country has subsequently been sparing. This was highlighted once again today, when the Vatican News’ own report on the Pope’s letter made no reference to the government or Ortega but described Nicaragua thus: “the Central American country that has been experiencing for years now a harsh crisis that has also affected the Catholic Church with a series of arrests or expulsions of bishops and priests.”
Francis made a notable intervention during his January 1 Angelus this year: “I am following with concern what is happening in Nicaragua, where bishops and priests have been deprived of their freedom.”
Diplomatic endeavors between the Holy See and Nicaragua have been quietly underway. However, Ortega’s anti-Catholic persecution has nevertheless continued. Another spate of clergy arrests took place in August; in the last few days, another priest was exiled from the country.
Indeed, exiled Nicaraguan researcher and lawyer Martha Patricia Molina reported Sunday that Ortega has ordered the expulsion of religious sisters from the country by the beginning of this month. The religious ordered out are those belonging to orders or groups whose non-profit status Ortega revoked earlier this year.
Molina has documented that after Ortega’s bloody clampdown against peaceful demonstrations in 2018 against his “arbitrariness, illegalities, corruption, nepotism, impunity,” the Catholic Church became “fundamental in the crisis of human rights violations facing Nicaragua.”
Consequently, the government “initiated an indiscriminate persecution against bishops, priests, seminary students, religious members, lay groups and to everything that has direct or indirect relation with the Catholic Church.”