Nicaraguan Government Strips Jesuit Order Of Legal Status In Country, Seizing Assets And Closes Colleges. Jesuit Order Says Leader Will Be Overthrown

On August 17th Reuters reported a Nicaraguan judge ordered the confiscation of assets from the prestigious Jesuit college Central American University (UCA), a 63-year-old university. Reuters obtained a letter from the college that reported a criminal court alerted the school that all of its assets would be transferred to the government.

Authorities have also frozen the bank accounts of UCA.

Reuters reports that ‘UCA, widely-considered one of Central America’s top private institutions of higher learning, said it stands accused of being a “center for terrorism organized by criminal groups,” which it rejects as false.’

In a statement UCA said the seizure was “part of a series of unjustifiable attacks” on Nicaraguans. The Catholic order also supplicated the government to reverse what they claim is a “drastic, unexpected and unfair” judicial order, and that the school be permitted to defend itself.

We hold the Government of Nicaragua responsible for all damages against the students, teaching and administrative staff, and other workers of the University and the cultural heritage of said country that derive from such an unjustified accusation and from the order to confiscate all the immovable, movable and economic assets of the University.

UCA said in their statement

The government asserts UCA as a “centre of terrorism,” blaming the college for having “betrayed the trust of the Nicaraguan people.”

‘UCA is the alma mater of many student leaders active in the 2018 anti-government protests that left more than 360 dead – mostly at the hands of police and other government-affiliated forces, according to human rights groups,’ UCA also notes

The week following President Daniel Ortega and his government then revealed that they would be pulling the plug on the Jesuit Order in their country.

On August 22nd Ministry of the Interior published an official statement of the Society of Jesus, approved by Minister Maria Amelia Coronel, which accused the Jesuits ‘of not reporting its “financial statements” for the fiscal years 2020, 2021 and 2022, and of having an “expired” board of directors since 2020, violating the provisions of Articles 34 and 35 of Law No. 1115, which establishes the regulation and control of non-profit organizations,’ CSW reports.

The government decrees the transfer of the Jesuit Order’s bank accounts and movable and immovable property to the state, along with the expected closure of three more Jesuit-affiliated universities: Loyola, Centroamérica and Fe y Esperanza.

Days before this announcement the Nicaraguan government also seized the homes of members of the Jesuit community in the capital, Managua. The Central American Province of the Society of Jesus issued a statement claiming what had happened.

The police appeared together with members of the judiciary at the home of the Jesuits Villa del Carmen residence, to demand their eviction arguing that this house is also government property.

They wrote

La Provincia Centroamericana de la Compañía de Jesús comunica que: Continúa la agresión injustificada contra los jesuitas en un contexto de total indefensión y de aterrorizamiento a la población nicaragüense. pic.twitter.com/vuMrI3oiYF

— Jesuitas CAM (@jesuitascam) August 23, 2023

CSW, an organization that seeks to “ensure that the right to freedom of religion or belief is upheld and protected,” issued a judgment that urges the government to reconsider their actions.

The Nicaraguan government’s move to cancel the legal status of the Society of Jesus is alarming, if not surprising. The Ortega regime has repeatedly targeted religious institutions that have not allied with the dictatorship, and their efforts are intensifying.

We call on the government to reverse the order targeting the Society of Jesus and all other civil society organisations who have been stripped of their legal status in recent years, to cease its harassment of religious leaders and institutions, and to release all those who have been arbitrarily detained or imprisoned.

We urge international community to hold President Ortega and his regime to account for their ongoing crackdown on independent civil society and severe violations of human rights.

CSW’s Head of Advocacy Anna Lee Stangl said

Furthermore, The Havana Times reports ‘the Central America and Caribbean Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the confiscation of the university’s assets and reminded the State of Nicaragua of its obligation to justify this serious measure in accordance with the provisions of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.’

The Jesuit Superior General, Father Arturo Sosa, S.J., also weighed-in on the decision to cancel UCA:

The UCA has always been in harmony with the Society of Jesus and the Catholic Church. Socially committed to the quality of training and the defense of the rights and lives of the most disadvantaged. All the national and international recognitions received by the UCA in these 63 years testify to this.

The Jesuit magazine America also weighed-in yesterday in a piece titled “The Dictator’s Playbook: Why Ortega is attacking the Jesuits in Nicaragua.” The author, Bill McCormick, S.J., a philosopher at St. Louis University, lamented over the ‘persecution’ and pseudomartyrdom of Catholics in the country; claiming that Roman Catholicism and Jesuitry has always been in a thorn in the side of dictators, and have kept governments ‘in-check,’ and issued a veiled threat that Ortega and his administration will be “overthrown” for his actions.

McCormick wrote (in part):

---

The essence of totalitarianism is the elimination of any competitors to state authority. The great enemies of any unjust regime are the family and marriage, the church, unions—and any social bodies with their own justifications for existence and activity apart from the state. Such bodies are the bedrock of a healthy civil society, but for an unjust regime, they are sites of resistance. And modern would-be totalitarian states, with the benefits of technology and mass communications, economic resources and absolutizing ideologies, have new ways to exercise control over their citizens by eliminating the social bodies that come between the people and the state.

This is where the Catholic Church, at its best, has been a thorn in the side of dictators around the globe and across history. (And it has not always been at its best.)

Many dictatorships have targeted the Catholic Church in their territories because it is a community with principles, values and social order that ultimately do not depend upon civil governments for origin or support. The church offers a set of criteria to judge governments independent of the reigning ideologies. It also offers spaces for potential dissent against and resistance to regimes, as indeed U.C.A. and Nicaraguan Jesuits did for protestors against Mr. Ortega.

The Society of Jesus has had a complicated history with politics and politicians since its founding, and it has been at the receiving end of dictatorial ire in many locales at different times. The Vatican suppression of the Jesuits due to pressure from secular governments from 1773 to 1814 was part of a multinational campaign to stamp out the Society as a source of opposition to centralizing political authority throughout Europe, as (at least perceived) agents of the papacy. For many monarchs, the existence of the Jesuits was a check on their ability to control the church within their own borders. The resistance to the Jesuits came in part from their nature as a transnational network: An autocrat in France could not hope to control the Jesuits on French territory so long as they could appeal to Jesuits in other countries or Rome for assistance.

In persecuting the Catholic Church and expelling the Society of Jesus, Daniel Ortega is carrying on this terrible legacy.

But will it work?

Probably not. In the short term, Mr. Ortega can make life very difficult for Catholics, as he indeed has. But his actions against the church come at some cost to him. Very few authoritarian governments can afford to keep consistent pressure on the Catholic Church, however many more divisions Stalin had than the pope.

Moreover, Mr. Ortega is creating martyrs—hopefully not literal ones. If he is overthrown, then it will no doubt be in part because of the part the church has played in defense of justice.

---

The Catholic News Agency (CNA) also reported on the “persecution of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua,” noting that in recent weeks Catholic practices and worship at their temples are much more heavily monitored by the government.

---

AUTHOR COMMENTARY

As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.

Proverbs 25:25

I am not claiming that Nicaragua is clean-cut and some ‘righteous’ nation, but I must say, I was very pleased and laughed when I learned of this.

The Jesuits are the single most evil organization and cult in the whole world, bar none, nothing compares. The Jesuits were created as part of the Counter Reformation in the 14th century to combat the rise of the Protestants, led by Ignatius de Loyola of Spain, and their whole purpose is to bring the whole world into subservience to the Vatican by any means necessary.

Go read the Jesuit Extreme Oath of Induction sometime… But part of it reads:

I furthermore promise and declare that I will, when opportunity present, make and wage relentless war, secretly or openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Liberals, as I am directed to do, to extirpate and exterminate them from the face of the whole earth; and that I will spare neither age, sex or condition; and that I will hang, waste, boil, flay, strangle and bury alive these infamous heretics, rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women and crush their infants’ heads against the walls, in order to annihilate forever their execrable race. That when the same cannot be done openly, I will secretly use the poisoned cup, the strangulating cord, the steel of the poniard or the leaden bullet, regardless of the honor, rank, dignity, or authority of the person or persons, whatever may be their condition in life, either public or private, as I at any time may be directed so to do by any agent of the Pope or Superior of the Brotherhood of the Holy Faith, of the Society of Jesus.

This is who we are dealing with. These people are Satan’s golden children.

So, when Jesuit magazine insinuates that this Ortega guy will be overthrown, they are saying that he WILL be executed, plus any other sympathizers.

[1] And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: [2] With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. [4] And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: [5] And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. [6] And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. [18] And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.

Revelation 17:1-2, 4-5, 18

---

[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).

The WinePress needs your support! If God has laid it on your heart to want to contribute, please prayerfully consider donating to this ministry. If you cannot gift a monetary donation, then please donate your fervent prayers to keep this ministry going! Thank you and may God bless you.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE