Newsroom (08/17/2025 20:40, Gaudium Press) Vatican News reports that the Nicaraguan government has expropriated the San José school, run by the Josephine Sisters, located in Jinotepe, Carazo department. The school was 40 years old.
The wife of dictator Ortega, Rosario Murillo, who is now co-ruler, accused the nuns of “crimes” during the 2018 protests, which led to the current persecution of the Church by the regime. Murillo says that Sandinistas were allegedly “tortured and killed” during the demonstrations in April of that year.
Murillo also declared that the school will henceforth be called the “Bismarck Martínez” educational center, in honor of a Sandinista militant killed during those protests.
Martha Patricia Molina, a Nicaraguan researcher on Church affairs, deplored the measure and accused Murillo of defamation against the congregation, whose nuns, she said, “since they settled in Nicaragua in February 1915, have educated children in Christian and humanistic values based on love of neighbor and the practice of charity.”
Condemnation by the United States
From Washington, the US State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, through its X account, described the confiscation decided by the Nicaraguan government as “further proof that the perversity of the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship knows no bounds.” This is not the first time that Managua has expropriated property belonging to a religious order or the Catholic Church. Last January, the Ortega-Murillo government expropriated two buildings owned by the Catholic Church in Nicaragua: the San Luis Gonzaga Seminary, in the diocese of Matagalpa, in the north of the country, and the La Cartuja retreat center. Over time, numerous bishops and priests have been arrested and expelled, and religious activities and processions have been banned.
Compiled by Dominic Joseph
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