The Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa reported on Monday that the communist regime turned the seized Episcopal Curia of Matagalpa into the location of a social security-affiliated company and stole all of the relics housed therein.
La Prensa reported that the confiscation of the Matagalpa Episcopal Curia, which the newspaper described as the “latest robbery” by communist dictator Daniel Ortega and his wife and “co-president” Rosario Murillo of the Nicaraguan Catholic Church, was “consummated” in recent days. The regime reportedly repurposed the building to serve as one of the locations of SERMESA, a local company affiliated with the Nicaraguan Institute of Social Security (INSS) that manages the nation’s Social Security medical clinics.
The building, La Prensa detailed, was originally built by the Church in the 1930s to serve as the Episcopal Palace. The building was seized by the Nicaraguan police in August 2022 during a two-week raid of the Matagalpa parish that culminated with the arrest of several members of the Nicaraguan Catholic Church, including Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, bishop of the diocese of Matagalpa.
Álvarez was sentenced to 26 years on “treason” charges in 2023 and stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship, rendering him a stateless person in clear violation of international law. The Ortega regime banished Bishop Álvarez to the Vatican in January 2024. Álvarez kept a low profile throughout 2024 and held his first public Mass in December in Seville, Spain, followed by an interview with a local Spanish newspaper in January.
“About the confiscation they have not said anything officially. There is no statement from them, [Ortega and Murillo] saying absolutely nothing,” an unnamed local resident of Matagalpa told La Prensa. “There has been speculation here that the Mayor’s Office was going to be moved [to the building], but there is no statement on the confiscation. Surely they are going to give it later or maybe they don’t care so as not to make a fuss.”
The local resident further explained to La Prensa that the building remained guarded by the regime’s police since the August 2022 raid — though the communist regime had it ransacked in January. The local resident stressed that the Nicaraguan Catholic Church housed important relics within the Matagalpa Episcopal Curia. A month later, in February, the building was painted, with the SERMESA sign appearing on top of one of the building’s entrances a few days ago.
“They ransacked all the belongings. There was the diocesan archive. The diocesan museum, all the relics, all the information of the episcopal curia of Matagalpa. That is its headquarters, the administrative building,” the unidentified local said.
La Prensa, citing information provided by the unnamed source, detailed that the SERMESA sign now rests above an entrance that led to the Athenaeum, a hall that the Church used for meetings and then later ceded to the local people of Matagalpa, who organized literary or cultural gatherings in the room.
“In the building there are dormitories, because that was the seminary. There are chapels, there is El Athenaeum. The [Pope] John Paul II hall, that is to say, it is a building that used to house seminary students. There are rooms on the second floor,” the local resident further detailed.
La Prensa reported that, since Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2007, the Nicaraguan Institute of Social Security has been dedicated to buying medical pension companies. The newspaper detailed that the regime bought SERMESA, the company that now occupies the building of the Episcopal Curia of Matagalpa, for $9 million. The company then reportedly purchased a local hospital in Managua that belonged to Tomás Borge, one of the nine Sandinista commanders who governed Nicaragua in the 1980s.
A source close to the Ortega regime claimed to La Prensa that the government has dedicated itself to medical companies and also pharmaceutical laboratories under the false argument that it is for the benefit of the population, but in reality “these are corrupt businesses of the Ortega-Murillo family and their close associates.”
The Matagalpa diocese is one of the Nicaraguan parishes hit the hardest by Daniel Ortega’s “war” against the Vatican and the dictator’s ongoing retaliation against the Nicaraguan Catholic Church for its support of the pro-democracy and anti-communist wave of peaceful protests in 2018.
Since 2022, Ortega dramatically escalated his crackdown against the local Catholic Church, banishing several of its members including the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag; shutting down Catholic media and universities; seizing the Church’s financial and other assets; and banning Catholic processions. The regime has also arrested and banished journalists covering local Catholic events.
In February, Bishop Álvarez spoke to the Catholic television network EWTN — drawing the ire of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, who accused the Vatican of being a “depraved pedophile” state guilty of “Pharisean mysticism.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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