Report: Nicaragua Bans Travelers from Bringing Bibles into Country

Nicaragua’s communist regime is banning travelers from bringing Bibles into the country, the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa reported this week.

The measure, the newspaper said, is part of new broader restrictions imposed by the regime of communist dictator Daniel Ortega prompting local transport companies to urge customers to be advised so as to “avoid setbacks” when entering the country.

La Prensa, a Nicaraguan newspaper operating in exile, explained that the measure was first denounced by social media users this month. The Central American-based bus company Ticabus issued a notice warning passengers that they could not enter Nicaragua with “Bibles, magazines, or newspapers” in addition to drones and sharp objects.

The newspaper reported that it reached out to Managua-based bus company Central Line S.A., which confirmed the ban on Bibles imposed by the communist “co-presidential” dictatorial couple of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.

“We recommend that you do not carry books in your luggage as they may be confiscated at Immigration,” the company told La Prensa, abstaining from disclosing further details to the newspaper.

The prohibition on Bibles marks the latest chapter in the Ortega regime’s ongoing persecution of Christianity in Nicaragua. Nicaraguan Priest Edwin Román, one of the several Catholic priests banished from their own country by Ortega and who now lives in Miami, denounced the prohibition, calling the communist regime a “diabolical dictatorship” that seeks to “eliminate God because it sees Him as a direct threat to its absolute control over citizens.”

“The Word of God instructs and inspires us to criticize all totalitarian regimes and to free ourselves from them,” Román wrote.

Spanish-Nicaraguan Catholic priest and theologian Rafael Aragón told La Prensa on Thursday that the measure is an authoritarian approach against Protestant beliefs, but more generally against the entire faith of the Nicaraguan population that still identifies as Christian. La Prensa, citing online statistical data, pointed out that roughly 79 percent of Nicaragua’s entire population identifies as either Catholic of Protestant. Throughout his remarks to La Prensa, the priest accused Murillo of being the person behind the prohibition.

“It is a way of asserting her authority and imposing her criteria to control the religious culture of the Nicaraguan people,” Aragón said, and added that he believes “Jesus and the Christian God are of little interest to Rosario [Murillo].”

Aragón asserted to La Prensa that the prohibition does not constitute an effective act of repression, as the Bible is already widely available in the country, but reasoned that Murillo “simply wants to demonstrate her controlling power.”

“She wants to ideologically impose the message that is transmitted to the Catholic and Evangelical communities. Nothing happens without her approval. … What she seeks is not to persecute religion or attack Catholics or Protestants, but to control the leadership of the churches, especially the Catholic Church, because the leadership of the bishops is strong, and even the leadership of the Pope,” the priest said.

“She wants to transform the paradigm of Nicaragua’s religious culture based on that logic, distancing it from what she considers to be Western culture dominated by Christianity,” he added, stressing that Murillo seeks to control the thinking of religious communities in order to bend it to the regime’s will.

Aragón explained to La Prensa that Murillo prefers “more spiritualistic and esoteric currents,” and asserted that the regime’s “co-president” perceives older influences from the East, especially from the philosophy and pagan traditions of ancient China and India.

“She has not made any clear statements [about Christ] and I don’t think she will. Christ is a strong personality who questions anyone who wants to manipulate his message. She doesn’t want to get involved in that,” Aragón said. “What she thinks is that the traditional culture of the Nicaraguan people comes from the original communities, from the indigenous peoples: their worldviews, their vision of the world, of human beings, and their values.”

“She is not interested in Santo Domingo or Jesus themselves, but rather in rescuing the origins behind these traditions, which predate the Spanish conquest. That is why she is not interested in discussing the personalities of Christ or the Virgin Mary; she is interested in the symbols through which Nicaraguan tradition has been transmitted in order to recover indigenous culture,” emphasized the religious leader.

Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo have waged a fierce persecution campaign against the Nicaraguan Catholic Church as punishment for the Church’s support of the peaceful April 2018 anti-communist process — which the communist regime brutally repressed, leaving at least 355 dead according to the Organization of American States (OAS).

The communist husband-and-wife dictatorial couple dramatically escalated their persecution of Christianity in Nicaragua from 2022 onwards, banishing several members of the Nicaraguan Catholic Church, forcefully shutting down Catholic universities, bank accounts, media, and other assets over the past three years.

The Ortega regime has forbidden numerous Catholic processions from taking place in the country, with reports published earlier this month indicating that, in addition to demanding police authorization for events, churches are prohibited from featuring blue and white colors in altars, colors that represent the Nicaraguan flag.

In October, Nicaraguan activist Muriel Sáenz gave Pope Leo XIV a copy of an over 400-page long report detailing over 1,000 known attacks committed by the Ortega regime to the Nicaraguan Catholic Church between April 2018 and July 2025. The report also contains extensive documentation detailing over 16,500 instances of Catholic processions and other religious events that the Ortega regime prohibited from taking place over the past seven years.

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