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MANAGUA, Nicaragua (LifeSiteNews) — Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian Nicaraguan regime has continued its crackdown on the Catholic Church by revoking the legal status of the international Catholic broadcaster Radio Maria.
Announced via the July 9 edition of the government’s newspaper La Gaceta, fresh restrictions were rolled out for Catholic and other Christian radio stations and organizations in Nicaragua. A total of 12 non-profits were affected, including evangelical and Pentecostal organizations in addition to Radio Maria Nicaragua.
The decree was issued by Minister of Interior María Amelia Kinloch, and comes in light of the steadily increasing clampdown on religion in the country.
La Gaceta wrote that the 12 organizations had “failed to comply with their obligations under the Law,” accusing them of not having reported their financial statements for periods of between 2 and 26 years. Such records would include, according to La Gaceta, “detailed breakdowns of income and expenses, balance sheet, detail of donations (origin, provenance and final beneficiary) and Boards of Directors.”
Radio Maria was deemed to be guilty of not having submitted financial statements from 2019-2023, and of not updating information about its board of directors since November 2021.
However, according to ACI Prensa, the Ministry of the Interior “decides not to receive these financial statements when the organizations want to file them and then argues failure to file as a reason for the cancellation of the legal status of targeted organizations.”
Already in April, the Catholic radio station reported that its bank accounts had been blocked, prompting a change in program scheduling.
Local news reported that Radio Maria Nicaragua stated in a social media post after the government’s decree that “the persecution in Nicaragua against the Catholic Church saw a new chapter yesterday afternoon.” The post appears to have been deleted.
So far, the authoritarian Ortega regime has imprisoned and exiled numerous priests and religious in recent years. Bank accounts of clergy and ecclesial-linked bodies have been frozen, religious congregations expelled from the country, and stringent crackdown has been especially made against the Catholic Church.
The internationally known case of Nicaragua’s Bishop Rolando Álvarez made headlines throughout the global press and has prompted retaliation from U.S. lawmakers in Congress.
READ: Exiled Nicaraguan Catholics testify to Congress about communist regime’s persecution of Church
After his house arrest in 2022 and his police arrest in July 2023, and having been sentenced to 26 years in jail, Bishop Álvarez was eventually released to the Vatican this January, along with Bishop Isidoro del Carmen Mora Ortega and a number of clergy and seminarians.
Bishop Álvarez had been a public critic of Ortega’s communist regime, which in August 2022 shut down a number of Catholic radio stations that were under his oversight.
Radio Maria itself, present in over 80 countries, states it has an audience of some 500 million annually. Heavily linked to the controversial alleged apparitions in Medjugorje, the radio network was founded in Milan in the 1980s, with its legal headquarters now next to the Vatican.
The network expanded into Nicaragua in 2000.
The exiled Nicaraguan researcher Martha Patricia Molina described the development as “one more arbitrariness that adds to the persecution of religious freedom.”
“Despite the silence that has been imposed on bishops and priests, the dictatorship continues to besiege, watching, threatening, exiling and attacking the Catholic Church of Nicaragua, (and) this would be one more means of communication that joins the other 15 that had already been closed,” Molina told 100% News.
“Today the dictatorship cancels the legal status of a radio station that has been evangelizing for more than 24 years. Its content was completely religious,” Molina wrote on X.
Radio Maria Nicaragua has been contacted for comment, and this report will be updated should there be a response.
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