In La Prensa, March 31, 2025
Currently a social security medical clinic operates now in the building taken by the Police since the arrest of Mons. Rolando Álvarez in August 2022.
The confiscation of the Episcopal Curia of Matagalpa, or the latest theft which the dictators Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo carried out against the Nicaraguan Catholic Church, was consummated in recent days when in one of the entrances to the building appeared a sign of SERMESA (Specialized Medical Services, Inc.), the company affiliated with the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute (INSS) which administers the social security medical clinics.
“They have not said anything officially yet about the confiscation. There is no press release from them (Ortega Murillo regime) saying anything. There has been speculation here that the municipal government offices were going to be moved here, but there is no press release about the confiscation. Surely, they will do it later, or maybe they don´t care to, so as to not make a fuss,” indicated to La Prensa a resident of Matagalpa, close to the Church.
The Episcopal Curia of Matagalpa was taken by the dictatorship in August 2022 when it removed Bishop Rolando Álvarez from the building to turn him into a political prisoner. Later in January 2023 they exiled him to Rome.
The building was guarded, explained the source, by police of the regime, and in January of this year 2025, the dictators ordered that it be ransacked. One month later in February, they also painted it. A few days ago, the sign of SERMESA appeared in one of the entrances to the building, which opens up to the hall known as the Atheneum.
They stole the relics of the diocese
The source consulted by La Prensa indicated that the Church had important relics within the Episcopal Curia of Matagalpa.
“They looted all the belongings. The diocesan archive was there. The diocesan museum, all the relics, all the information of the episcopal curia of Matagalpa. This is its headquarters, the administrative building,” he indicated.
He mentioned that the Atheneum is a hall, an auditorium which the church used for meetings, but later consigned it to people in Matagalpa who organized literary or cultural events. The auditorium within the Curia is called the Atheneum.
“There are bedrooms in the building, because the seminary was there. There are chapels, the Atheneum is there. The John Paul II hall is there, in other words, it is a building which housed students of the seminary. On the second floor there are bedrooms,” he added.
Some rooms, which previously were occupied by the Franciscan Bishops Julián Barni and Carlos Sancti, were turned into large rooms for the exhibition of photographs of all the trips of Pope Juan Paul 11.
An old canvas of the Sacred Family hung in the Atheneum, along with the photos of the nine bishops who have served the Diocese of Matagalpa.
The origins of the building of the Matagalpa Curia
The background of the Episcopal Curia of Matagalpa is that it was known as the Palace of the Bishopric, better known as the Episcopal Palace, built by the church in the decade of 1930, and was located across the street from the cathedral of Matagalpa, which currently houses the San Luis School.
The bishops of Matagalpa had their offices there and there also was a seminary.
Nevertheless, in the decade of 1950 the church built another building, which the faithful began to equally call the Palace, like the first construction, or the Episcopal Curia.
The San Luis School continued to function in the first Episcopal Palace, as it does today. While the residence of the bishop and the administrative offices of the curia were moved to where the new one is located, in the so-called Street of the Banks, across the street from the offices of INSS.
This is the one which the Ortega Murillo dictatorship confiscated, even though it is rumored that the San Luis School also is intervened, but the regime has allowed it to continue to be administered by the church. “This is unconfirmed information”, said the Matagalpa source close to the Church.
Curia building now belongs to SERMESA
Since Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2007, INSS devoted itself to buying social security medical enterprises. They bought Specialized Medical Services (SERMESA), better known as the Managua Central Hospital, for nine million dollars.
In 2013 SERMESA, now affiliated with INSS, bought the Managua Blue Cross Hospital, founded in 1997, which belonged to Tomás Borge, one of the nine Sandinista comandantes who governed Nicaragua in the decade of the 1980s.
SERMESA in this way became the business which brought together the rest of the hospitals which were acquired by INSS, like La Fraternidad, Polimesa, Bemenic, La Salud, La Popular in León, Médicos Unidos in Managua and Sirvisa in Masaya, in addition to other small social security medical businesses distributed throughout the rest of the country.
In 2017 INSS bought SUMEDICO for an amount close to $17 million dollars, another one of the important private social security medical companies which existed in the country.
A source close to the regime indicated to La Prensa that the dictatorship has gotten involved in medical companies and also pharmaceutical laboratories under the false argument that it is for the benefit of the population, but in reality it is about the corrupt businesses of Ortega Murillo and their relatives.
Now SERMESA has installed a clinic in the building of the Episcopal Curia of Matagalpa.
Furthermore, the installation of a clinic of SERMESA in a building confiscated by the regime is added to the fact that INSS, to which SERMESA is affiliated, has been receiving a large amount of the properties confiscated by the dictatorship.
Just in this year of 2025, in the first 3 months, more than 30 confiscated properties have been assigned to INSS. In 2024, 72 confiscated properties were donated to INSS.
Confiscations of the church
The de facto confiscation of the Episcopal Curia of Matagalpa, because they have not made it official yet, is added to others which the Ortega Murillo dictatorship has carried out against the Catholic Church since 2019.
According to the sixth edition of the report “Nicaragua: a persecuted Church” up to December 2024, 19 properties had been confiscated by the dictatorship from the Church since 2019.
Among those confiscations are the building that belonged to the Missionary Sisters of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the John Paul II University, the Santa María de la Paz monastery of the Trappist Sisters, the headquarters of the Daughters in the Holy Spirit of Santa Luisa de Marillac Association, the Central American University (UCA) of the Jesuits, the properties of the Fabretto Foundation, the parsonage of San Pedro del Norte, among many others.
In addition, the regime has frozen the bank accounts of the Church and committed many other abuses.