11/14/2024 Nicaragua (International Christian Concern) — Bishop Carlos Herrera, bishop of Jinotega and chairman of Nicaragua’s Conference of Catholic Bishops, was deported from Nicaragua to Guatemala on Wednesday, according to the media and International Christian Concern (ICC) sources close to the Catholic church in Nicaragua.

The move is a continued escalation of the government’s longstanding campaign of persecution against the Christian church in Nicaragua and comes as the latest act in a years-long string of persecution.

According to sources, President Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian regime has forced more than 85 Catholic leaders and nearly 60 evangelical leaders into exile.

In September, Nicaragua released 135 political and religious prisoners, expelling them from the country. That release followed a similar large-scale release of prisoners in 2023, in which the Nicaraguan government exiled 222 political and religious prisoners.

Among those released in 2023 was prominent Catholic Bishop Rolando Álvarez. Bishop Álvarez was arrested in 2022 and sentenced to 26 years in prison for speaking publicly about the persecution facing the Nicaraguan church. He served a year of his sentence before being exiled in 2023.

Ortega has led the country’s newfound antagonism toward the church, which he sees as subversive to his claim to absolute power. Nicaragua’s population is predominantly Christian, with about 50% in the Catholic church and 33% part of an evangelical denomination. Despite this and Ortega’s claim to the Roman Catholic faith, he has led the government in staunch opposition to the place of Christian institutions in society.

Speaking earlier this year at the International Religious Freedom Summit, which ICC co-sponsored, an exiled Nicaraguan explained the duress the church in Nicaragua is experiencing today.

“As a church, we are living through the worst moments in our history in Nicaragua since its arrival more than 500 years ago to the present moment,” the priest told the gathered audience. He was arrested, insulted, beaten, and imprisoned for months, and his family in Nicaragua is left to live with police parked outside their home, watching their every move.

Such surveillance is increasingly common in Nicaragua where, according to the priest, “Every Sunday, patrol cars full of police are parked in front of the country’s Catholic churches” and “the faithful who attend the Eucharist on Sundays are photographed [and] the homilies delivered by the remaining priests are being recorded.”

This type of surveillance regime is strikingly similar to what China imposed on its religious communities. Nicaragua maintains a close relationship with China, which it sees as an important ally in the face of increasing sanctions from the West and a struggling economy. In December 2023, China and Nicaragua announced upgraded relations, bringing the two autocracies even closer together than before.

In July 2022, Nicaragua expelled 18 nuns from the Missionaries of Charity order, founded by Mother Theresa and active in Nicaragua since 1988. According to the BBC, the nuns were bussed under police escort to the country’s southern border and made to walk across into Costa Rica. The Missionaries of Charity were stripped of their legal status in late June, an administrative measure that laid the groundwork for their later expulsion.

Earlier in 2022, the Ortega government expelled the Vatican’s ambassador to Nicaragua, drawing pointed condemnation from the church.

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