EWTN News reports on the ongoing persecution of Catholics in Nicaragua under the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship, where priests face surveillance, imprisonment, or exile for preaching on social issues, and where the Church’s charitable works have been dismantled. The article quotes an anonymous priest describing police monitoring of liturgical services, the banning of processions, the freezing of parish accounts, and the exile of bishops such as Rolando Álvarez. While the suffering of Nicaraguan Catholics is real and deserves the prayers of the faithful, the article itself is a masterclass in modernist omission, reducing the Church’s mission to naturalistic humanitarianism and completely ignoring the only true remedy for the world’s ills: the Social Kingship of Christ.
The Suffering Is Real, but the Diagnosis Is Fraudulent
The facts presented are grim. Over 1,000 documented attacks against Catholics. 149 priests expelled or exiled. Four dioceses without a resident bishop. Caritas Nicaragua dissolved. Parish bank accounts frozen. Processions banned. Priests photographed every Sunday by police. These are not fabrications; they are the bitter fruits of a godless regime that recognizes, however dimly, that the Catholic Church — when it acts as the Catholic Church — is the most formidable obstacle to totalitarian power.
But what does the article do with these facts? It presents them as though they were merely political persecution, a violation of “human dignity,” a matter of “freedom” in the liberal sense. The priest is quoted as saying that Nicaraguans “love the pope, because he [represents human] dignity and the Church.” This is the language of the conciliar sect, not of the Catholic Church. The Church does not exist to represent “human dignity” in the abstract, naturalistic sense of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. The Church exists to lead souls to eternal salvation through the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the sacraments, and the preaching of the integral Catholic faith. Pius XI declared in Quas Primas: “His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The article’s reduction of the Church’s mission to the defense of “dignity” and “freedom” is a capitulation to the very liberalism that Pius IX condemned in the Syllabus of Errors (proposition 79): “it is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism.”
The Exiled Bishops: Shepherds Without a Shepherd
The article mentions Bishop Rolando Álvarez, exiled to Rome in January 2024, and Bishop Carlos Herrera, president of the bishops’ conference, serving from exile. It notes that in dioceses without a bishop, there are no priestly ordinations. This is a devastating observation, and it reveals the absolute necessity of the episcopal office for the life of the Church. Without a bishop, there is no confirmation, no ordination, no jurisdiction. The faithful are spiritually orphaned.
But the article fails to ask the most important question: to whom do these exiled bishops owe their allegiance? They are bishops of the conciliar sect, formed in the spirit of Vatican II, which proclaimed the “Declaration on Religious Freedom” (Dignitatis Humanae) — a document that directly contradicts the teaching of Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos, of Pius IX in the Syllabus, and of Leo XIII in Immortale Dei. These bishops, however courageous their personal witness may be, operate within a system that has already surrendered the Church’s divine right to public recognition by the state. They suffer under a dictatorship, yes, but they serve a “Church” that has already proclaimed — in the name of the Second Vatican Council — that the civil right to religious freedom is a natural right of the human person. How can a bishop effectively resist a regime’s persecution of the Church when the “Church” he serves has already conceded the theological principle upon which that persecution rests?
St. Robert Bellarmine, whose authority the sedevacantist position invokes, taught that a manifest heretic loses his office ipso facto. The bishops of the conciliar sect, by their acceptance and promotion of the heretical doctrines of Vatican II — religious freedom, ecumenism, the evolution of dogma — have rendered their own position untenable. Their suffering under Ortega is real, but it is also a divine judgment upon a hierarchy that has betrayed its sacred trust.
The “Pope” and the Illusion of Solidarity
The article notes that the priest finds hope in “the pope’s encouragement expressed to the exiled Nicaraguan bishops in August 2025.” This is the most revealing sentence in the entire article. Which “pope”? The usurper in the Vatican — whether called Francis, Leo XIV, or whatever name the next occupant of the Apostolic See (vacant since at least 1958) may bear — is himself a modernist, a promoter of the very errors that have weakened the Church’s ability to resist persecution. The “encouragement” of a manifest heretic is not a source of hope; it is a snare.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, warned: “if men were ever to recognize Christ’s royal authority over themselves, both privately and publicly, then unheard-of blessings would flow upon the whole society, such as due freedom, order, and tranquility, and concord and peace.” The conciliar sect has abandoned the Social Kingship of Christ. It preaches “dialogue” with dictatorships, “encouragement” of persecuted bishops who share its own modernist convictions, and “hope” in the face of a persecution that is, in part, the consequence of its own apostasy. The Nicaraguan Church suffers not only because Ortega is a tyrant, but because the conciliar sect has disarmed the faithful theologically, replacing the sword of the Spirit with the olive branch of liberal humanitarianism.
The Silence on the True Remedy
The article describes the Church in Nicaragua as “a suffering Church” that “moves forward with hope” and finds consolation in “the resurrection of Christ.” These are beautiful sentiments, but they are incomplete without the fullness of Catholic truth. The resurrection of Christ is not merely a source of emotional comfort; it is the foundation of His Kingship over all creation. “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Me” (Matt. 28:18). The Church does not merely “hope” for freedom; she has the divine mandate to demand that all nations, including Nicaragua, recognize the authority of Christ the King and govern themselves according to His law.
Pius XI was unequivocal: “The state must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations, both male and female, who are indeed the most valiant helpers of the Pastors of the Church and contribute most to the expansion and establishment of Christ’s Kingdom.” The dissolution of Caritas Nicaragua, the banning of processions, the surveillance of priests — these are not merely political injustices; they are acts of rebellion against the Kingship of Christ. And the only true remedy is not “dialogue” with the dictatorship, not “encouragement” from a modernist antipope, but the restoration of the integral Catholic faith, the reconsecration of nations to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the recognition of Christ the King as the supreme Legislator and Judge of all peoples.
The Omission That Condemns
What does the article not say? It does not say that the true Church — the Church of all ages, the Church that produced the martyrs of the early centuries and the confessors of the Roman persecution — is not the conciliar sect. It does not say that the “bishops” of Nicaragua, however personally courageous, are bishops of a false church that has abandoned the faith. It does not say that the “priests” who celebrate the New Mass (or even the Traditional Latin Mass within the conciliar structures) operate within a system that has lost the fullness of Catholic jurisdiction. It does not say that the only true hope for Nicaragua — and for the world — is the return to the integral Catholic faith, the rejection of Vatican II, and the restoration of the papacy to its rightful occupant (whoever that may be, when God wills it).
The article is, in the end, a piece of conciliar journalism: it reports facts, expresses sympathy, invokes “hope,” and calls for “solidarity” — all within the framework of a Church that has already surrendered the theological principles necessary to resist the enemies of Christ. The suffering of Nicaraguan Catholics is real. But the remedy offered by EWTN News and the conciliar sect is a placebo. The true remedy is the one proclaimed by Pius XI: “Then at last, so many wounds can be healed, then there will be hope that the law will regain its former authority, sweet peace will return again, swords and weapons will fall from hands, when all willingly accept the reign of Christ and obey Him, and every tongue will confess that our Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.”
The Church in Nicaragua — and everywhere — does not need the encouragement of a modernist antipope. It needs the restoration of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in its fullness, the preaching of the integral Catholic faith without compromise, and the recognition of Christ the King as the supreme authority over all nations, all governments, and all human societies. Until that is accomplished, persecution will continue, and the “hope” offered by the conciliar sect will remain what it has always been: a mirage in the desert of apostasy.
Source:
‘Prison or exile’: Priest in Nicaragua reveals how the dictatorship persecutes the Church (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 05.05.2026