Ortega and the Church: A Cautionary Tale
By Brandon Van Dyck, Public Discourse. (image credit: public domain)
The revolutionary priests bear more responsibility for the Church’s present hardship. They did not merely violate canon law; they did so for the sake of revolution. Now the Church is suffering under a dictator that that revolution produced. This should serve as a cautionary tale to would-be revolutionaries of all political stripes. To make revolution is to set in motion unpredictable and destructive forces from which one may not escape.
In August 2023, Daniel Ortega, president of Nicaragua and leader of the Sandinista Party, expropriated the prestigious Jesuit-run Central American University (UCA). His government confiscated UCA’s buildings and assets and evicted more than a dozen Jesuit priests living on campus. A week later, his government legally dissolved the Society of Jesus in Nicaragua and seized its finances and property, including hundreds of Fe y Alegría schools serving low-income families in rural areas.
These were the latest in a string of anti-Catholic actions taken by Ortega. Since 2022, his government has banned public Catholic gatherings, including the Easter procession, in most municipalities. It is surveilling Masses. It has expelled several Catholic missions and charities from the country and shut down or confiscated over two dozen Catholic colleges. It has imprisoned and exiled a dozen Catholic priests. It recently sentenced the bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando Álvarez, the Nicaraguan Church’s leading government critic, to twenty-six years in prison.
A lot can change in two generations. In the 1970s and 1980s, liberationist Catholics played a critical role in the Sandinista revolution. Many left-wing priests and Catholic activist networks participated in the multi-year insurrection that toppled dictator Anastasio Somoza. Four revolutionary priests served as ministers in Ortega’s first Sandinista government from 1979 to 1990.
Ortega’s evolution from revolutionary in the 1970s to dictator in the 2010s and 2020s is not especially surprising. As Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way argue in their 2022 book, Revolution and Dictatorship, successful revolutions—e.g., France in 1789, Russia in 1917, China in 1949, Cuba in 1959, Nicaragua and Iran in 1979—tend to give rise to repressive, often totalitarian dictatorships. Revolutionary regimes notoriously “eat their own,” narrowing and turning against the individuals and groups that initially supported them.
Nicaragua is no exception. In the 1970s and 1980s, Ortega depended on the support of Catholics. Now he is targeting them, including former allies. Nicaragua’s revolutionary Catholics bear some responsibility for this turn of events. By participating in the Sandinista revolution that brought Ortega to power, they unwittingly helped to sow the seeds of the Nicaraguan Church’s present crisis.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
