Nicaragua’s communist regime prohibited 406 Catholic Via Crucis (Stations of the Cross) processions during the first week of Lent, the newspaper La Prensa reported this week.
Catholics around the world are presently observing Lent, a 40-day period of fasting and reflection in anticipation of Holy Week and Easter. As it is a movable observance, 2026’s Lent period began on February 18, Ash Wednesday, and will run through April 2, Holy Thursday. The Stations of the Cross is a public Catholic procession that commemorates Jesus Christ’s last day on Earth prior to His resurrection.
Nicaraguan activist and researcher Martha Patricia Molina denounced to La Prensa that the government prohibited 406 different Station of the Cross processions from being celebrated outdoors on February 20, the first Friday of this year’s Lent. According to Molina, regime authorities ordered that “everything has to be inside the temples.”
“Jesus on the Cross remains confined to the walls of each parish. The dictatorship is afraid that the laity and images will take to the streets to pray and fulfill their promises,” Molina wrote in a Facebook post.
For years, Molina has led an ongoing investigation into the Ortega regime’s extensive and continued persecution of Nicaraguan Catholics and repression of Christianity in Nicaragua under communist dictator Daniel Ortega and his wife and “co-President” Rosario Murillo. Molina and her team’s findings are documented in a yearly report titled, “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church,” the seventh edition of which was presented to Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican in October 2025.
The Nicaraguan researcher called on laypeople to “not abandon their parish priests, to continue documenting attacks, and to remain vigilant and avoid exposing themselves if they see uniformed or plainclothes police officers arriving at churches.” Molina also denounced that Nicaraguan police officers are visiting and intimidating priests to get them to hand over their Holy Week event schedules.
“There will be a police presence at Lent and Easter Triduum activities, which have been confined to churches. The police will make sure that no one leaves the parish boundaries,” she said.
Since 2018, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have led a brutal persecution of Christianity as “punishment” for the Nicaraguan Catholic Church’s support of the April 2018 wave of peaceful anti-communist protests that called for an end to communist rule in the Central American nation. According to the latest edition of “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church,” the Ortega regime committed 1,010 different and documented acts of Christian persecution in Nicaragua between April 2018 and July 2025, the cutoff date for the report’s seventh edition.
Some of the acts of Christian persecution documented by the report include anti-Church speeches issued by Ortega and Murillo, the arrest, torture, and banishment of several members of the Church, the forced seizure of Church assets, attacks against churches, the disruption and prohibitions of church events and processions, and the systematic shutdown of Catholic universities, television channels, and radio stations, among other acts.
ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language division of the Catholic News Agency, reported last week that the Ortega regime expelled priest José Concepción Reyes Mairena from Nicaragua. Father Reyes Mairena, from the Diocese of León, was arrested and interrogated by Nicaraguan migrant officers after he returned to Nicaragua earlier this month following a two-year stay in Spain. The officials denied the priest entry to the country.
Mairena Reyes marks the 309th member of the Nicaraguan Catholic Church that has been forcefully expelled from Nicaragua by Ortega and Murillo. Molina explained to ACI Prensa at the time that over 95 percent of all Church members expelled are Nicaraguan nationals who have been banished from their own country by the ruling communist dictators.
“They detained him, questioned him about his trip to Spain and why he had returned to the country, and after a lengthy interrogation, they refused him entry and sent him back to Spain,” an unnamed priest from the Diocese of León detailed to ACI Prensa.
In January, Molina denounced to La Prensa that the Ortega regime had banned the dioceses of León and Chinandega from carrying out door-to-door evangelization activities. Sácrates René Sándigo, the Bishop of León, had intended to carry out the activity this year as part of the 500th anniversary of the Diocese’s foundation.
The Nicaraguan newspaper reported in December that the Ortega regime banned travelers from bringing Bibles into the country. Local bus companies confirmed the prohibition to La Prensa and detailed at the time that they advised travelers not to bring Bibles in their luggage to avoid confiscation.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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