SÃO PAULO, Brazil – At least 3,500 acts of religious piety will have been forbidden by the Sandinista regime till the end of the 2025 Lent, lawyer Martha Patricia Molina, who monitors the persecution of the Catholic Church from exile in the United States, told Crux.

According to Molina, who keeps a network of clandestine informers in distinct points of Nicaragua and receives reports from them concerning religious freedom, Palm Sunday was particularly eerie this year, with threats from security agents who broke into churches and took pictures from Mass attendants.

“Even children were menaced by the regime’s armed forces,” she said.

That was the third year in a row in which traditional processions and scenic activities were suspended by the government.

“There were no processions, and the traditional Judeas [theatrical enactments of Jesus’ passion and crucifixion] that happen every year all over the country during Lent and the Holy Week neither occurred this year,” Molina explained.

She said that policemen intimidated priests in several parts of the Central American nation, “threatening to put them in jail if they disobeyed their orders.”

“Those are very serious violations of the right to religious freedom, which is a human right that every Nicaraguan citizen has and that should be respected by the government,” Molina added.

Right at the beginning of Lent, the regime led by President Daniel Ortega and his wife, co-President Rosario Murillo, impeded two priests from returning to Nicaragua.

“Father Jalder Hernández was on a pastoral mission in the United States and wasn’t allowed to get into Nicaragua,” she said.

A member of the Archdiocese of Managua, Hernández had already suffered an attack from Sandinistas. In 2018, when popular movements from all over the country took to the streets and staged protests for several days, Hernández was hit by Ortega supporters as he was at the atrium of the Church of Saint James in Jinotepe.

Molina said another presbyter was forbidden to get into Nicaragua as he tried to return to his country from abroad. His name was not released.

“The Nicaraguan dictatorship keeps persecuting and attacking alleged critics, especially people who are involved with the Church, with a special focus on priests,” she argued.

Auxiliary Bishop Silvio Baez of Managua, who had to leave the nation in 2019 and now lives in the United States, posted on his X account that, despite the fact that the “Nicaragua dictatorship has banned street processions,” the regime “cannot prevent the Crucified One from revealing His victory in every fight for truth and justice, every defense of human dignity, and every act of solidarity with the victims.”

In Managua, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes celebrated a quick Palm Sunday ceremony, with a small procession of churchgoers around the cathedral itself. According to Spanish news agency EFE, a number of armed officers placed at specific points of the Church kept the Cathedral under continuous monitoring.

The promotion of “internal Via Crucis” has become common in Nicaragua lately, with many local churches opting for them instead of more public ceremonies.

The Church began to be seen as a force of opposition to the regime in 2018, after several days of street protests shook the country. The attention given by Church organizations to demonstrators of the opposition and their tireless efforts to secure their lives and citizenship rights led the Ortega administration to cut the ties with most Catholic leaders.

Since then, the Church has been targeted by Sandinistas as the major civic institution from the opposition.

According to Álvaro Leiva Sanchez, who heads the Central American Association of Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (known as ACDH-ANPDH) from exile in Costa Rica, the regime has been “seriously violating the religious rights of its people.”

“As a human rights organization, we have been permanently monitoring the deep religious crises that Nicaraguans have been enduring,” affirmed Leiva Sánchez, who is also a delegate of the mission to Central America and the U.S. of the Canadian Human Rights International Organization (CHRIO).

Leiva Sánchez emphasized that the government has been spreading “terror” all over Nicaragua with its “policemen who abruptly get into the Churches in order to reiterate that religious freedom is not being respected – even in this special period when processions are so important.”