Earlier in the month the Nicaraguan government confiscated all the assets of the International Red Cross, and now the government is running that institution. It also cancelled the legal status of a large Evangelical Church known as El Verbo, which included a web of Church works, including education, orphanages, etc. According to existing law, those assets will now be part of the State. This article deals with the bank accounts of the Catholic Church, which initially the Cardinal accused the press of exaggeration. But the government finally released a statement about the freezing of the bank accounts of the Catholic Church, accusing them of money laundering and implicating the banks in the process as well.
Ortega-Murillo Regime orders freezing the bank accounts of the Catholic Church
By Alberto Miranda, May 26, 2023 in DIVERGENTES
DIVERGENTES confirmed that the bank accounts of at least three of the nine dioceses of Nicaragua, including its parishes, were blocked, without the banks offering any information. Experts warn that the dictatorship is preparing the way for the “confiscation” of the churches in the country.
A priest from Granada went to withdraw money from the bank account of his parish on the morning of Friday May 26th, but he was not able to…the teller notified him that the account had been blocked. Hours later, different Catholic sources confirmed that the accounts of nearly all the nine diocese of the country – including those of their parishes – were frozen on orders of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, in another escalation of the religious persecution against Catholicism in Nicaragua.
The blocking of the accounts became known in some parishes this past Friday night. For example, a priest from Chinandega notified his faithful that they will not pay through electronic transfer for some pastoral books, because the account of the parish was blocked. This Friday other priests learned about the blockage of their assets, and in the afternoon Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes met with priests of the Archdiocese of Managua, also affected, to learn about the scope of the situation.
Like the Nicaraguans banished by the Ortega-Murillo regime this past February, the private banks did not notify the ecclesiastical authorities about the freezing of the accounts, and nor have they made a statement about the action taken against the dioceses. DIVERGENTES has confirmed that the dioceses affected are: Managua, León and Chinandega, Matagalpa and Estelí.
For the lawyer and researcher on religious issues, Martha Patricia Molina, the regime wants to paralyze the operations of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, especially the projects which have not yet been affected by the cancelation of the NGOs, communications media and associations administered by the Catholic Church.
“This is a serious blow for the Church, because let us remember that they also have daily commitments to pay, even their formation centers are being affected; there is payroll to meet, there are bills for electric energy, potable water and different expenses which are incurred,” pointed out the expert.
According to the third edition of the study “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church?”, done by Molina, during the first quarter of 2023 ninety aggressions and attacks against the Catholic Church were recorded. It has been the period of the greatest religious persecution documented since the social uprising of April 2018. In total, the regime has carried out a total of 529 attacks against bishops, churches and laity. During Holy Week 3,176 processions were prohibited, in what is considered to be a brutal escalation against Catholicism.
Ecclesiastical sources believe that the freezing of the accounts can be related to the recent arrest this past Thursday of the priest Jaime Iván Montesinos Sauceda from the municipality of Sébaco, accused of the political crime of “harm to national sovereignty”. Montesinos belongs to the Diocese of Matagalpa, one of the most hard-hit by religious persecution, to such a point that its bishop, Mons. Rolando Álvarez, was sentenced to 26 years of prison in February.
Priests Eugenio Rodríguez and Leonardo Guevara from Nueva Segovia and the cathedral of Estelí respectively, were taken to the Police to submit them to “investigations.”
Regime intends to “confiscate churches”
Lawyer Yader Valdivia, a member of the Nunca Más Human Rights Collective, does not discard the possibility of a “massive confiscation of all the churches in the country.”
“What is at risk now is that the churches pass over into the hands of the State, like what happened with the International Red Cross, because now they have done everything: they have attacked religious and laity…they have jailed pastors, they have taken their nationality away, they have expelled them from the country. The only thing left is institutionalizing the dioceses, and if possible, closing them down definitively,” warned the human rights defender.
Valdivia stated that the psychosocial impact that these repressive acts cause among the faithful is part of “a tactic to permeate more the terror of exercising the right to freedom of worship.”
“What can be expected is more repression and the fear that the faithful have of attending masses (…) we have even documented that the people who have been detained have been warned that they cannot visit a church. What is coming for the faithful is more repression, that they punish you for professing your faith. From the Human Rights Collective we are sending out an alert on the international level,” insisted the lawyer.