Reports: Ortega Regime Kidnaps Another Priest After Banishing 19 Catholic Clergy

Nicaragua’s communist regime reportedly kidnapped Catholic priest Ezequiel Buenfil Batún on Tuesday, the latest arrest in its ongoing persecution campaign against the Nicaraguan Catholic Church.

The priest’s abduction reportedly took place less than 72 hours after dictator Daniel Ortega ordered the banishment of 19 members of the Nicaraguan Catholic leadership to the Vatican. The 19 had been kept as political prisoners under criminal sentences of varying length. Among the best-known of those imprisoned was Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, the bishop of Matagalpa, who had been sentenced to 26 years in prison for “treason” due to his outspoken criticism of Ortega’s regime.

Buenfil, a Mexican national, served as the director of the San Juan Neumann Convent, located in the city of Chinandega. The convent belongs to the Consecrated Missionaries of the Most Holy Savior Foundation, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that the Ortega regime forcefully shut down on Tuesday alongside 15 others. The Ortega regime has closed down more than 3,500 NGOs since 2018.

Nicaraguan lawyer and researcher Martha Patricia Molina, who documents the Ortega regime’s persecution of the country’s Catholic Church, confirmed the priest’s kidnapping to local media outlets and newspapers. Molina told La Prensa on Wednesday that it remains unknown if the priest has been expelled from Nicaragua.

“What I know is that the police kidnapped him; they informed me on Monday. I don’t know if they have already expelled him [from the country],” Molina said. “Until today, they have not told me if they have already sent him to any border to expel him.”

“The dictator [Ortega] always needs to have his hostages because criminal states see human beings as things, as bargaining chips; he always needs to have political prisoners to be able to ‘negotiate,'” she continued.

Nicaraguan authorities have neither confirmed nor denied the priest’s arrest and banishment at press time.

Ortega and his Sandinista regime have dramatically increased the persecution of Catholicism and expanded it to other Christian denominations in Nicaragua. Ortega himself declared “war” against the Vatican and the Catholic faith in 2022.

The communist regime has continuously punished the Nicaraguan Catholic Church for its support of anti-communist protests that began in April 2018, when thousands flocked to the streets to demand the end of roughly four decades of Sandinista rule in Nicaragua. The Sandinista forces reportedly killed more than 300 people during the 2018 protests.

Ortega’s persecution of Catholicism escalated dramatically in 2023. Since 2018, human rights groups have documented 700 attacks against the Nicaraguan Catholic Church by the regime, 307 of which took place in 2023. 

The attacks range from prohibiting Catholic festivities and processions to arrests and banishments of members of the Church, the seizure of assets and bank accounts, constant police surveillance and harassment of the nation’s parishes, and the forced closure of Catholic media, among other authoritarian actions.

The communist regime also maintains a continuous narrative campaign in its state media apparatus against the Nicaraguan Catholic Church spearheaded by Rosario Murillo, dictator Ortega’s wife and the vice president of the regime.

Murillo regularly issues public addresses in which she condemns and insults members of the Nicaraguan Catholic Church, branding them “servants of Satan,” “representatives of the devil,” “demons,” “blasphemers,” or “false representatives of God,” all while denying that her husband’s regime is engaging in any persecution against the Church.

Two unnamed priests from the Diocese of Matagalpa, Bishop Álvarez’s diocese, told La Prensa on Wednesday that they find themselves in a state of fear, expressing distrust of the “apparent normality” that the regime wants to present the nation in using dialogue with Pope Francis and the Vatican, which resulted in the banishment of 19 members of the Church.

“I cannot deny that we are happy that our pastors are free, even if it is not in Nicaragua, the place where they worked in their ministry,” one of the priests said. “But there are fewer and fewer of us here, and that limits the Church’s ability to reach the most needy.”

The priest continued by stating that the Church has not let itself be intimidated by the acts of persecution of priests and constant police surveillance in the parishes.

“Uniformed police agents come to this parish dressed in civilian clothes to take pictures; they are there during the masses, some without police badges, but we already know them,” the priest said. “This causes anguish among the parishioners and priests; we cannot move to do our work with peace of mind.”

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.