The images are bewildering. A group of men wearing long tunics, carrying large crosses, are running frantically down the street, trying to stay ahead of the police officers giving chase.
This is not a scene from a movie, but rather Holy Week in Nicaragua, where the faithful in the small town of Nindiri tried to hold a procession last week ahead of Easter Sunday. This might seem utterly uncontroversial in a deeply Catholic country. But Nicaragua is a Catholic country like no other. Amid ever worsening relations with the Church, President Daniel Ortega announced in February that it was banning most public celebrations of Easter.
Friction between the increasingly dictatorial Ortega and the Church is not new. But tense relations are reaching a boiling point, putting the devout in the middle of a power struggle between two mighty forces.
Some 90 percent of Nicaraguans describe themselves as Christian, most of them Catholic. And by interfering so directly with what to many is a personally important spiritual tradition, Ortega is only intensifying the depth and breadth of opposition to his rule. For now, Ortega is firmly in control, but his brazen crackdown against the Church, now extended to religious practices, is undoubtedly turning him, his wife Vice President Rosario Murillo and his powerful family into even more hated figures.
As a result, the regime will find it necessary to become even more repressive.
The Catholic Church is the most respected institution in Nicaragua. Its influence and moral authority is held in the highest regard by many Nicaraguans. This is precisely why Ortega has concluded that criticism by priests and bishops—who have spoken out about the regime’s brutal violations of human rights—are a serious threat to his rule.
Now, he has to contend with even sharper criticism from none other than the Pope.
In an interview in March, Pope Francis described Ortega as unbalanced, arguing that the Nicaraguan leader’s behavior is reminiscent of “the Communist dictatorship of 1917,” or “Hitlerians” of the 1930s. The Pope was referring to Ortega’s ongoing crackdown, which has all but destroyed relations between the Vatican and Managua.
One case that outraged the Holy See was the regime’s treatment of Bishop Rolando Alvarez. Alvarez, a critic of the regime, had already become a well-known figure, particularly since he was put under house arrest in August 2022 in the northern city of Matagalpa, accused of supporting “violent groups.” A picture of Alvarez on his knees in front of his church, pleading with armed officers, quickly went viral, outraged the Vatican and prompted protests from the Latin American Episcopal Council.
Then earlier this year, when Ortega expelled more than 200 political prisoners, Alvarez was initially included in the prisoner release but refused to leave the country. The bishop was then swiftly charged and convicted of a series of crimes, including treason, and sentenced to 26 years in prison.
His ban of Holy Week celebrations shows Ortega is worried about the influence of the Catholic Church. But his campaign to undercut it is a risky one.
In the meantime, diplomatic relations between Managua and the Holy See ruptured. Its top envoy to Nicaragua, Apostolic Nuncio Monsignor Waldemar Stansilaw Sommertag, was declared persona non grata and expelled from the country, and the embassies have closed.
It’s a startling turn of events, even for a relationship that has experienced some wild swings.
Ortega now increasingly fits the description of a far-right dictator, but he came to fame and to power as a Marxist revolutionary leader. The 1980s Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN, guerilla movement he led enjoyed significant support from Catholic priests adhering to liberation theology, who hoped Sandinista victory over Anastasio Somoza Debayle’s dictatorship would help alleviate the grinding poverty that afflicted most Nicaraguans.
Ortega himself, as a good Marxist, was an avowed atheist. He had been elected president in 1985 after the FSLN overthrew the Somoza dictatorship, but lost reelection in 1990. When he decided to run again in 2007, he realized atheism was not a winning formula in a deeply religious country. He declared himself a devout Catholic and wrapped his administration in conservative Catholicism.
As his presidency started veering sharply into authoritarianism, respected Catholic leaders became increasingly critical.
His wife, Murillo, flamboyantly professes her own brand of new-age spirituality, describing it as a Christian faith. On April 6, during Holy Week, she accused those who complained against the ban on Easter celebrations as not believing in God, saying they “do not live as Christians.”
The key turning point in Ortega’s relations with the Catholic Church came in 2018, when protests against pension cuts drew support from students and started to look like a challenge to the regime. The government responded with appalling brutality, killing hundreds of protesters. Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans fled into exile in what became a watershed in Nicaraguan history. It was the moment when Ortega, who had enacted constitutional reforms, manipulating the system to make it almost impossible to remove him from power, could no longer escape the label of dictator.
Priests had tried to mediate between the two sides, but also offered protesters shelter from the police. Ortega’s diatribes against the church became a staple of his speeches. Dozens of clerics were arrested and the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Theresa’s order, were expelled. When campaigning for another pro forma election in 2021, he referred to Catholic bishops as “terrorists.”
The order banning public Holy Week celebrations has resulted in even more arrests and expulsions, not only affecting priests.
On April 6, police arrested journalist Victor Ticay in the town of Nandaime. The day before, Ticay, an employee of the Nicaraguan television channel Canal 10, had reportedly posted on Facebook about an Easter celebration. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the arrest, along with Nicaragua’s “relentless campaign to threaten the press into silence or exile.”
Separately, authorities accused Donanciano Alarcon, a Panamanian parish priest working in Nicaragua, of holding a Holy Week procession. He was arrested, packed into a patrol car, driven to the Honduran border and ordered to leave the country.
His ban of Holy Week celebrations shows Ortega is worried about the influence of the Catholic Church. But his campaign to undercut it is a risky one. The very reason he fears it—its moral authority and credibility among much of the population—is the same reason the crackdown is stoking resentment. He is fueling a dangerous, vicious cycle of escalating repression and popular anger, the kind that makes dictators lie awake at night.
Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist and a regular contributor to CNN and The Washington Post. Her WPR column appears every Thursday. You can follow her on Twitter at @fridaghitis.