MANAGUA, Nicaragua (LifeSiteNews) — Just one week after confiscating the University of Central America from the Jesuit Order, Nicaragua’s dictator Daniel Ortega has revoked the legal status of the order within the country and seized all of its property.
On Wednesday, August 23, the communist dictator declared the Society of Jesus, founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola, to be illegal in Nicaragua. The government simultaneously confiscated all properties belonging to the missionary order.
The move came barely a week after the government forcibly took possession of the Jesuit University of Central America (UCA), calling it a “center of terrorism” and claiming the Jesuits had not complied with tax laws. The university, located in the nation’s capital city of Managua, had protected thousands of students who took part in the 2018 protests against the Ortega regime. Together with other universities in Managua it served as an epicenter of the demonstrations against Ortega, resulting in a violent government crackdown that saw more than 300 civilians killed before the demonstrations were quelled.
Objecting to the seizure of their properties and their effective expulsion from the country, the Jesuits of Central America issued a statement last week from their regional headquarters in El Salvador. “This is a government policy that systematically violates human rights and appears to be aimed at consolidating a totalitarian state,” they declared. “These grave accusations are totally false and unfounded.”
“The de facto confiscation of the UCA is the price to pay for the search for a more just society, for the protection of life, truth and the liberty of the Nicaraguan people, in consonance with the motto: The truth will set you free,” the order wrote.
Father Arturo Sosa, S.J., the superior general of the Society of Jesus, wrote in a letter to Central American provincial Father José Domingo Cuesta, S.J, that with regard to the confiscation of the university, “a fair trial – with impartial justice – would bring to light the truth of the whole plot that the government has been executing, since the youth protests of 2018, against the UCA, against many other works of the Catholic Church and against thousands of institutions of civil society, with the aim of suffocating, closing or appropriating them.”
READ: Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega freezes bank accounts of several Catholic dioceses and priests
The U.S. State Department’s senior Latin America official Brian Nichols condemned Ortega’s seizure of the university, posting on X, formerly called Twitter, “The confiscation of the Central American University, a symbol of academic excellence and hope for the future of Nicaragua, represents a major erosion of democratic norms and the closing of civic space.”
Twenty-six universities in Nicaragua have now been closed by the government and assets seized since December 2021. UCA is reported to serve around 9,500 students and is one of the country’s most prestigious institutions of higher education.
In a further insult to the Church, the government has renamed the university after a Sandinista student leader who was a friend of Daniel Ortega before his rise to power and who was killed in 1967 by the Somoza regime. The university’s name is now “Casimiro Sotelo Montenegro National University.” The flag of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, the communist party of Ortega, now hangs within the university facilities.
The former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Organization of American States, Arturo McFields Yescas, who was exiled for denouncing the unjust and arbitrary actions of the Ortega regime, called the moves against the Jesuits “deplorable.”
“Changing the name of what you steal, like when a criminal steals a car, paints it, and changes the license plate, is promoting anti-values. That is what is being promoted in this new repressive stage of the dictatorship,” McFields said in an interview earlier this month.
In a similar denunciation of Ortega’s continued persecution of the Catholic Church and Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa, U.S. Congressman Chris Smith called on Ortega to produce for the international community public proof of life for Álvarez.
In an August 10 press release, Smith wrote, “Bishop Álvarez, a courageous and compassionate servant of God, has suffered immensely at the hands of Daniel Ortega’s brutal regime for more than a year now. He reportedly remains unjustly imprisoned at the Jorge Navarro Penitentiary Complex, called La Modelo, which is notorious for its harsh conditions.”
Since there has been no reliable evidence of the bishop’s state of health or even that he is alive, I call on President Ortega to provide proof to the international community that Bishop Álvarez is still alive and to allow immediate access for the Red Cross to independently examine his health without restriction and without government officials or prison guards present.
The safety and well-being of Bishop Álvarez and the other religious and political prisoners who continue to be persecuted by the Ortega-Murillo regime is a top concern for the U.S. Congress and defenders of human rights across the world. All religious and political prisoners should be released.
Additionally, I renew my request to President Ortega for assistance in securing a meeting for me with Bishop Álvarez in Nicaragua.
On July 3, Alvarez was reported to have been released from prison, only to be thrown behind bars again on July 5 after negotiations over the terms of his release broke down when he refused to abandon his flock by leaving the country.