Another Holy Week in Nicaragua with Churches under Siege
HAVANA TIMES – Aurelio is a parish coordinator who works closely with the priest in organizing the Stations of the Cross. Marcos, who also works in his parish, noted that Holy Week has always been a time of “reflection.” Meanwhile, Janeth tries to attend the processions with her family, though she regrets that they are now held “locked” inside the church.
These are the testimonies of three Catholic parishioners who, for the third year in a row, will experience restricted Holy Week celebrations: there will be no processions in the streets.
With the start of Lent on March 7, 2025, several Catholic churches organized what they called the “first internal Stations of the Cross,” a tradition that, for Catholics, marks the beginning of this 40-day period of spiritual preparation leading up to Holy Week.
Since then, every Friday, church coordinators have been inviting parishioners to participate in parish-based Stations of the Cross.
Since 2023, Nicaragua’s dictatorship — which has maintained a full-on assault against the Catholic Church — has banned public processions. To date, religious activities remain restricted and are only allowed inside, in gardens or patios of church grounds.
“Before, we used to go out into the streets and walk through the communities. Now we can’t. We have to do it inside the church, and that takes away from the popular participation, because people loved the processions. Now we just pray and read the stations (different episodes of Christ’s passion) inside the church,” explains Marcos, 31, who helps with the Bible readings during the Stations of the Cross in his church in one of Managua’s eastern neighborhoods.
Police Maintain Surveillance at Parishes
Aurelio, 35, is a parish coordinator responsible for planning, executing, and evaluating activities at his church in the capital. He says parishioners are constantly exposed to police surveillance, including from civilians who linger around the church.
“We already know who the plainclothes ones are. There was a fair recently and we saw them there. They take photos, observe who’s there and what’s happening. The priest has to provide information so they’re not ‘surprised’ by people going in and out of the church, but they’re there every Saturday and Sunday,” said Aurelio.
In the past three years, he adds, they have tried to keep their faith “intact” and adapt to the circumstances.
“Now we have to make do with the interior of a parish, and it’s not comfortable at all to do a Stations of the Cross inside the church,” Aurelio emphasizes.
This devoted Catholic points out that the measure particularly affects those who, due to illness or old age, can’t make it to the church and used to wait for the Stations of the Cross to pass by their homes.
Holy Week with 14,000 Police in the Streets
The National Police, the dictatorship’s main repressive and surveillance arm, will deploy around 14,000 agents during Holy Week, so these parishioners do not rule out continued monitoring in the churches.
Unlike previous years, Marcos has noticed less visible police presence around his church, although he doesn’t rule out that during Holy Week the police might still send agents.
“When we started doing them (the Stations of the Cross) inside the church,” Marcos explains, “there was police presence around, with patrols stationed nearby, but this year I haven’t seen anything. I think it’s because they already know that the Stations are being done inside the church, since weekly reports of the activities are submitted to them.”
According to the report by researcher Martha Patricia Molina titled Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church?, in 2024 the regime banned at least 4,800 religious activities in the country. Among these were important religious traditions such as the Lenten and Holy Week processions, which are an integral part of Nicaraguan cultural and religious devotion.
Janeth, a 44-year-old homemaker from the municipality of La Concepción, Masaya, enjoys taking part in Holy Week religious activities, but sometimes she thinks about not going anymore for fear of being “marked.”
“For me, attending the processions is a way to express my faith, and it’s what I try to teach my youngest daughter. I don’t understand why the Government keeps persecuting us. It seems so unfair,” Janeth laments.
Nicaragua is listed among the 78 countries in the world where Christians are not safe from persecution, according to the 2025 World Watch List by Open Doors, a non-governmental organization based in the Netherlands.
In July 2024, the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN) denounced in a report that the dictatorship continues its “systematic” attacks against the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations.
Meanwhile, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, in its 2025 report, recommended that the US government designate Nicaragua as a “Country of Particular Concern.”
The report adds, in 2024, the conditions for religious freedom in Nicaragua “remained dire,” and the dictatorship continued its offensive against religious freedom through arbitrary detention, imprisonment and exile of religious leaders and followers, the cancellation of legal status for religious organizations, and harassment and intimidation of believers.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.