Diabolical or zeal for control?: Priests reject the prohibition of the regime on bibles coming into the country

Diabolical or zeal for control: Priests reject the prohibition of the regime bibles coming into the country

La Prensa, Dec 18, 2025

For Rafael Aragón, Catholic priest and Spanish-Nicaraguan theologian, the measure is an authoritarian statement against Protestant beliefs, but more generally against all the faith of the Nicaraguan population who still identify as Christians.

The Sandinista dictatorship prohibited the entry into Nicaraguan territory reading materials, including books, magazines, newspapers and even the Bible. Priests rejected the restrictive measure. For some it is a diabolical decision, and others see it as a sign of the zeal for control of the dictatorship.

For the Nicaraguan priest, Edwin Román, exiled in Miami, the Ortega Murillo regime is precisely a “diabolical dictatorship” that seeks “to eliminate God because they see him as a direct threat to their absolute control over the citizenry”. “The Word of God teaches and inspires criticizing every totalitarian regime and to free ourselves from it,” wrote Román in his social networks.

Román is one of the priests who denounced the State repression, aided the victims in Masaya, and has maintained a firm position against the religious manipulation of the dictatorship of Nicaragua which describes itself as “Christian, socialist and in solidarity” in the government propaganda.

The prohibition against the entry of bibles became known weeks ago, through social networks, after the transport business Central Line, Inc in Costa Rica recommended that their passengers not bring reading materials in their baggage. In this way they could avoid “delays” and preempt confiscations on the part of the Sandinista authorities.

 

Rafael Aragón, a Catholic priest and Spanish-Nicaraguan theologian, told La Prensa that the measure is an authoritarian statement against Protestant faiths, but more generally against all the faith of the Nicaraguan population who still identify as Christian. This means around 79% of the population, which includes Catholics and Evangelicals, according to data from the digital site Statista in 2020.

“It is a way of showing her authority and imposing her criteria for controlling the religious culture of the people of Nicaragua,” the priest explained to La Prensa, who thinks that “Rosario is not very interested in Jesus and the Christian God.”

According to Aragón, the measure does not represent an effective repressive act, given that the Bible already is a widely disseminated document in the country. “Shey simply wants to show her controlling power,” he said in reference to Murillo.

“She wants to ideologically impose the message that is transmitted to the Catholic and Evangelical community. That nothing happens that does not have her approval…What she wants is not persecuting religion nor attacking Catholics or Protestants, but controlling the leadership of the churches, above all the Catholic Church, because the leadership of the bishops is strong, and even the leadership of the Pope,” he added.

Through the leadership – the priest insisted – Murillo wants to control the thinking of the religious communities to fold it into that of the regime. “She wants to transform the paradigm of the religious culture of Nicaragua from that logic, moving it away from what she considers the western culture dominated by Christianity,” he insisted.

Aragón added that she preferred more spiritualist and esoteric currents. In that sense, Murillo discerns ancient eastern influences, above all from the pagan traditions and philosophies of ancient China and India. “She has not made any clear statement (about Christ) and I believe she is not going to. Christ is a strong personality who challenges anyone who might want to manipulate his message. She does not want to deal with that. What she thinks is that the traditional culture of the people of Nicaragua comes from native communities, indigenous peoples: their cosmo-visions, their vision of the world, of human beings and their values,” he explained.

“She is not interested in Saint Dominic nor Jesus as such, but recovering what is indigenous behind these traditions, prior to the Spanish conquest. That is why, she is not interested in talking about the personality of Christ or the Virgin Mary; she is interested in the symbols through which the Nicaraguan tradition has been transmitted in order to recover what is indigenous,” highlighted the priest.