The Pope and the Church in Nicaragua

Nicaragua, long run by an authoritarian Sandinista regime, is now heading into totalitarianism.

The distinction is an old one, and not much used since the end of the Cold War. But it has its value, as the Nicaragua case shows. An authoritarian regime seeks to dominate politics—but only politics. It does not seek to dominate the economy and all of civil society. Put another way, citizens and institutions that stay out of politics do not run into trouble with the government.

A totalitarian regime seeks to dominate all aspects of life, from the family to the church to the university, to all forms of economic life. The Soviet Union was the classic totalitarian state, whereas Latin American military juntas were classic authoritarian ones.

Today’s Nicaragua demonstrates he distinction, because this week the regime seized total control of Central American University, known as UCA for its Spanish initials, which had been run by Jesuits since its founding.

Here’s part of the The Wall Street Journal’s account:

A Nicaraguan court ordered the government seizure of the Jesuit-run Central American University, declaring that the school was a “center of terrorism.”

President Daniel Ortega’s confiscation of the university is the latest blow to the Catholic church, universities and the remnants of Nicaragua’s battered civil society. The government has expelled and imprisoned priests, including a bishop, and many political opponents.

The university said Wednesday that a court ordered the confiscation of its property and bank accounts, saying that the university had become a “center of terrorism, organizing delinquent groups.”

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As a result, the university known as UCA was suspending all activities, it said in a statement to the school community.

The charge of supporting terrorism is ludicrous and every Nicaraguan knows it. What the Ortega regime is doing, clearly, is outlawing any center of life and activity that it does not control. The Journal also noted that “Ortega has closed independent media, political groups and civil society organizations…. Ortega has been in power since 2007. He last won re-election in 2021 after arresting and imprisoning all of his opponents in a vote deemed to be a farce by the U.S. and the international community.”

The United States has sanctioned the regime and its leading figures, and even some of Latin America’s most left-wing leaders –such as Chilean president Boric and Colombian president Petro --have denounced human rights violations in Nicaragua.

One common aspect of totalitarian regimes that differentiates them from less-repressive authoritarian versions is their treatment of religion and the church—especially the Catholic Church. In Nicaragua, the Catholic Church has long been in Ortega’s sights precisely due to its independence from the state. The independent, Jesuit-run UCA was an almost inevitable target for a vicious regime such as Ortega’s. This year as well, Ortega jailed Bishop Rolando Alvarez—who received a 26-year sentence when he refused to board a plane taking political dissidents to the United States in February.

The jailing of Bishop Alvarez and the takeover of UCA are only the latest in a long line of attacks on the Church in Nicaragua. And here a problem has developed: the near silence of the Pope. The prominent journalist Andres Oppenheimer noted this problem one year ago, in August 2022:

It’s hard to decide what is more outrageous: Nicaragua’s dictator Daniel Ortega’s decision to shut down seven Roman Catholic Church radio stations and hold a bishop and his aides under house arrest, or Pope Francis’ total silence about these attacks on his own people….what’s truly hard to explain is why Pope Francis has failed to condemn — or even mention — the Ortega regime’s attacks on his own church. The Vatican’s representative to the Organization read a statement Friday, more than a week after the shutdown of the [church-run] radio stations, expressing “concern” about the events in Nicaragua. But there has been no word directly from the pope.

“Pope Francis’ silence about the ongoing persecution against the Nicaraguan Catholic Church is unacceptable,” Tamara Taraciuk, a Latin American expert with the Human Rights Watch advocacy group, told me. “Considering that Nicaragua’s own Catholic priests are risking their lives to denounce Ortega’s abuses, what is the pope waiting for to make a statement in their support.

Similar criticisms are easy to find, and the jailing of Bishop Alvarez finally led to two comments about the Ortega regime by Pope Francis. In February the Pope said he was “saddened” by the jailing of Bishop Alvarez. In March the Pope compared the Nicaraguan regime to "the communist dictatorship of 1917 or the Hitlerian dictatorship of 1935." But since March of this year, more silence.

Here one is inevitably reminded of a historic photo of Pope John Paul II during the Pope’s visit to Nicaragua in 1983 admonishing a Nicaraguan priest, Ernesto Cardenal, for his participation in the Sandinista regime.

Here is an account by Cardenal, from the Catholic News Agency:

“When he came over to where I was, I did what I had planned to do in this case: take off my beret and kneel down to kiss his ring. He didn’t let me kiss it, and waving his finger as if it were a cane, he told me in a reproachful tone: You must regularize your situation. Since I didn’t answer anything, he repeated it again,” Cardenal recounted in his book “The Lost Revolution.”

The UCA is a Jesuit university and Pope Francis is a Jesuit. Moreover, he is the first pope ever from Latin America. It would be folly to wish for a repeat of the scene from 1983; Pope Francis is too frail and the issue today is not the participation of priests in the regime.

But at bottom nothing has changed: a totalitarian movement seeks to dominate and damage the Church in every aspect of its activities. It should not be too much to ask for this Jesuit, Latin American pope to say far more to help the Church in Nicaragua. One can imagine a real campaign, not least in other Latin American countries, to denounce the Ortega regime and defend the Nicaraguan Church. Perhaps the seizure of UCA will energize the Pope. It should.