OPINION:
Last year, in the dead of night under a dark August sky, police agents, with orders from Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega, raided the home of Bishop Rolando Jose Alvarez Lagos. Bishop Alvarez and nine other men, some of whom were Catholic priests, had spent two weeks rationing food and water as Mr. Ortega’s agents tried to starve them out.
Moments before he was detained, Bishop Alvarez posted a desperate plea to his countrymen on social media: “#SOS #Urgent. At this time the National Police have entered the Episcopal rectory of our Matagalpa diocese.”
Six months later, 222 political prisoners languishing in Mr. Ortega’s detention centers were removed from their cells and deported to Washington after a negotiation with the U.S. Some were clergy members, but Bishop Alvarez, who is deeply committed to his countrymen, refused to leave, and he is now serving a 26-year prison sentence. There is a petition underway for the pope to name him a cardinal.
Charged with “organizing violent groups and inciting them to carry out acts of hate against the population with the aim of destabilizing the Nicaraguan state,” Bishop Alvarez is the first bishop to be imprisoned since Mr. Ortega’s return to power in 2007. His tragic story is only one illustration of the war Nicaragua is waging against Catholics, who make up 45% of the country’s population.
The targeting of Catholics has risen since a nationwide wave of anti-Ortega demonstrations that started in 2014 and culminated in April 2018. That month, as a result of a declaration that the regime was raising taxes and lowering benefits, the Ortega regime faced the largest protests in its history. After five days of unrest, Mr. Ortega canceled the reforms, but not before his forces killed dozens and wounded hundreds of protesters.
During the hostilities, some churches gave shelter to unarmed protesters, and Mr. Ortega enlisted Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes to mediate a peaceful settlement. But no good deed goes unpunished.
On Sept. 29, 2018, Mr. Ortega declared all political demonstrations illegal and unleashed a war against Catholics as if they were as much a threat to his power as the U.S.-backed Contras who exchanged gunfire with the Sandinistas in the 1980s. Through the year, the regime killed hundreds and injured thousands.
Tensions heated up in 2022. Mr. Ortega accused the Catholic Church of inciting the opposition to overthrow the government, and his agents have arrested priests, shut down three Catholic television stations and forced a dozen Catholic radio stations off the air.
Last summer, the regime shut down more than 100 civic groups, nongovernmental organizations and religious charities. Mr. Ortega’s agents even shut down Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity organization and expelled 18 nuns to Costa Rica. In the weeks that followed, the regime banned the use of a religious procession in the capital city of Managua.
In August, when Mr. Alvarez’s home was raided, Silvio Jose Baez Ortega, an exiled Managua bishop, tweeted, “With a heart full of pain and indignation, I condemn the nighttime kidnapping of Monsignor Alvarez.”
In November, the Inter-American Human Rights Court, which acts as the judicial arm for the Organization of American States, declared the regime in contempt for ignoring its rulings on the treatment of political prisoners. After 75 years of membership since its 1948 founding, Mr. Ortega ensured Nicaragua would be on track to complete its withdrawal from the organization by the end of this year.
Three months later, in February, the regime sparked outrage after it banned the celebration of traditional public processions of the Way of the Cross in parishes across the country.
In a blistering address to the nation, Mr. Ortega accused Catholic bishops of “grave crimes and horrors,” musing, “I don’t believe in popes or kings. Who chooses the pope? If we want to talk about democracy, the people should first elect priests and bishops,” suggesting that “even the pope” should be “elected by direct vote and not by the organized Mafia in the Vatican.”
Unable to maintain his silence any longer, Pope Francis told the Argentine media outlet Infobae on March 10 that the Ortega regime was a “rude dictatorship” led by an “unbalanced president.”
In Nicaragua, “we have a bishop in prison, a very serious and capable man, who wanted to give his testimony and did not accept exile,” the pope said about Bishop Alvarez. “It is something from outside of what we are living as if it were a communist dictatorship in 1917 or a Hitlerian one in 1935.”
Mr. Ortega immediately proposed to cutting diplomatic ties with the Holy See, and two weeks later, the Vatican closed its embassy, sending its papal ambassador to Costa Rica.
Despite the recent ban on demonstrations, protests continue to haunt Mr. Ortega. Under pressure, the regime released a dozen jailed Catholic priests last week and sent them to Rome as part of an agreement with the Vatican.
In a sudden turn of events, Mr. Ortega’s regime said the move was a result of “the permanent will and commitment to find solutions.” Despite this show of amnesty for the media, the Ortega regime simultaneously transferred eight other priests from house arrest to its El Chipote prison.
Mr. Ortega’s crackdown on Catholicism is backfiring and his power is deteriorating. He may hold the keys to Nicaragua’s presidential palace, but the communist dictator may soon find himself imprisoned in his own jails. While his regime has command of 45,000 active troops, they are no match for a united front of Catholics who make up nearly half of the nation’s population of 7 million.
Mr. Ortega is fated to learn that, in the end, fear, intimidation and guns are no match for the will of the people — or the inspirational power of the cross.
• Jeffrey Scott Shapiro is a former Washington prosecutor who served as a senior adviser and director of the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting from 2017 to 2021. He now serves on The Washington Times’ editorial board and focuses on human rights.
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