Ortega’s Sandinista regime shuts another Catholic university in Nicaragua

Daniel Ortega's Sandinista government in Nicaragua has shut down another Catholic university, the latest in anti-Catholic Church persecution that does not show signs of abating.

The Immaculate Conception Catholic University in Managua, run by the Archdiocese of Managua, and which offers philosophical and theological formation for seminarians was permanently closed and its operating license canceled by the Nicaraguan Ministry of the Interior on May 18. 

This is the latest move to suppress the Catholic Church that already had universities suppressed. Earlier this year the Nicaraguan government rescinded the legal status of Universidad Juan Pablo II and Universidad Cristiana Autónoma de Nicaragua “for non-compliance with the laws that regulate them.” In the past year alone, the Nicaraguan dictatorship closed 17 other private universities.

Immaculate Conception University had been inaugurated in 2011 and was training seminarians from various dioceses across Central America.

The university closure comes amid tensions between the powerful Catholic Church that represents 58.5 percent of the 6.5 million inhabitants and Ortega, a one-time Marxist guerrilla, who ruled Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990 without interruption, returning to power in 2007.

In 2018 the Ortega regime cracked down on anti-government demonstrations, leaving at least 355 people dead and 2,000 injured. It also jailed about 500 protesters and forced tens of thousands of others into exile, including Bishop Silvio Jose Baez, auxiliary bishop of Managua, who was forced to flee the country. The government has also arrested opposition leaders and many of them were held in secret locations, incommunicado, with no access to relatives or lawyers. 

Result of criticizing the regime's repression, crimes and rights violations

Catholic bishops have since 2018 been vocal in criticizing Ortega, saying citizens have the right to live in peace and freedom. And Ortega has attacked the  priests who criticize the regime's repression, crimes and violations of rights and freedoms, even calling Catholic bishops "terrorists". Ortega also accused Catholic leaders of plotting a coup while anti-government forces took to the streets because bishops and priests had exhorted people "to exercise their right to peacefully demonstrate on the basis of civic and evangelical values".  

Ortega's Sandinista government then expelled Archbishop Waldemar Sommertag, apostolic nuncio to the Central American country. The Holy See currently now has no diplomatic representation in Nicaragua since past March when the Nicaraguan government forced it to close its nunciature after Pope Francis described Ortega's regime as a "crude dictatorship".

Bishop Rolando Jose Alvarez Lagos of Matagalpa (central Nicaragua) who voiced criticism over the government's harassment of the Church is now in prison on a 26-year-sentence "for undermining national integrity and propagation of false news through information and communication technologies to the detriment of the State and Nicaraguan society". He has also been stripped of his citizenship.

This year the government also expelled two nuns and a Panamanian Claretian missionary and banned outdoor Holy Week celebrations, a popular spiritual devotion in the country.

Earlier, the regime earlier ordered the closure of the television channel of the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua and expelling the Missionaries of Charity – the congregation Mother Teresa of Calcutta founded – accusing the nuns who work for the poorest of the poor in the country since 1988 of "money laundering, financing of terrorism and financing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."