The Sandinista regime of co-dictators Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in Nicaragua published an unhinged screed this weekend declaring the Vatican a “depraved pedophile” state guilty of “Pharisean mysticism,” an apparent response to the public appearance of a bishop Managua persecuted.
Nicaragua, under the iron-fisted rule of Sandinista communists for years, has violently persecuted Christians, and Catholics in particular, since priests and other clergy joined a wave of anti-communist protests in the country in 2018. While the protests were largely peaceful and demanded only the establishment of a democratic regime, Ortega responded with outsized violence, killing over 300 people.
The Nicaraguan regime has since adopted a policy of forced exile, threatening political dissidents who do not accept flights out of the country. Ortega and Murillo, his wife, have also striven to eliminate Catholicism, Nicaragua’s most popular religion, from the public square, banning thousands of traditional Catholic events and shutting down institutions such as schools and media outlets associated with the Catholic Church. Ortega has also increasingly expropriated Church-owned properties and imprisoned priests, bishops, and other Catholic leaders in the past seven years.
The outburst published by the Nicaraguan External Affairs Ministry on Sunday claimed that it was responding to “declarations which, in the name of the Vatican state, are being made from pages and platforms of its own,” without elaborating. Most reports on the statement indicate that the Foreign Ministry was specifically responding to an interview that Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, a Nicaraguan bishop that Ortega held as a political prisoner and deprived of his citizenship, offered to the Catholic television network EWTN.
Álvarez has for years been an outspoken critic of communism and supported the peaceful protests of 2018. In 2023, the Nicaraguan government attempted to exile him alongside 222 other political prisoners, illegitimately taking away his Nicaraguan citizenship, but Álvarez refused to leave the country. As a result, the communist regime imprisoned him on spurious “treason” charges and sentenced him to serve over 26 years behind bars.
Facing international pressure, Nicaragua ultimately freed Álvarez just as arbitrarily in early 2024, refusing to discuss the details of his situation. He appeared gaunt and in poor health upon his release, indicating likely torture. Álvarez was exiled to the Vatican, where he currently residents, and has presided over Catholic services and offered few statements to the press.
The EWTN interview was offered in the context of the one-year anniversary since his departure from Nicaragua. Álvarez did not directly condemn Ortega and Murillo or wade into detailed political statements. Instead, he focused on the Christian message, stating that he feels “liberated” outside of Nicaragua and thanking “a supernatural action of God” for his freedom.
“I love my people very much, I love my people,” he told EWTN, sending blessings to his country. “I am a bishop for the universal church and that is, I was ordained bishop for Matagalpa, I am the visible head of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of Esteli and I will continue to be so until God wills it.”
These remarks apparently infuriated the Nicaraguan regime into publishing the extensive statement on Sunday in which it accused the Vatican of systematically promoting pedophilia.
The unspecified Vatican statements that offended Managua, according to the Foreign Ministry, were “irresponsible and disrespectful and violate the maximum laws and norms that rule independent life” in the country.
“We condemn this inadmissible conduct of people who, from narcissistic thrones, wearing masks and disguises of benevolence and Pharisean mysticism, continue hurting the Nicaraguan people,” the Foreign Ministry railed, “in their ridiculous, insolent, and indecent pretense of political power, to obscure behind phantasmagoric robes and absurd pretense – in the end, fanatical about subjugation and the violation of all rights.”
“From the millions of voices and souls brutally silenced by the Inquisition rise all the peoples sacrificed and bleeding because of the depraved, pedophile Vatican State, denounced as such by the whole world,” the statement continued, “that in these times is still unaware of virtues, rights, and allies itself with the forces of darkness, barbarism, genocide, and evil.”
The Foreign Ministry went on to claim the Catholic Church has a history of “abominable, perverse and inhuman practices aligned with infamous colonial monarchs.”
“Usurping the name of God, it beheaded, stabbed, and exterminated entire cultures and people,” the statement declared.
The clearest hint that the trigger for this diatribe was Álvarez’s EWTN interview was a reference to the Vatican offered support to “persons who have stopped being Nicaraguan.”
The statement concluded with a statement insisting that the Nicaraguan government “promotes respect for all religious creeds.”
Confidencial, a Nicaraguan news outlet, described the tone of the text as “written in the style of Murillo,” the First Lady and co-president, often identified by experts and former Nicaraguan officials as the more passionate driver of Christian persecution in the country.
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