9 de April 2025
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Aurelio is a parish coordinator and works closely with his church priest in organizing the Stations of the Cross. For Marcos, who also works in his parish, Holy Week has always been a time of “reflection”. Janeth, meanwhile, tries to go to the processions with her family, although she regrets that they are now held “closed” in the church.
These are the testimonies of three Catholic parishioners who, for the third consecutive year, will experience the Holy Week celebrations with restrictions: there will be no processions in the streets.
With the beginning 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 prior to Major Week.
Since that date, every Friday, church coordinators have been inviting their parishioners to participate in the parish Stations of the Cross.
Since 2023, the Nicaraguan dictatorship – which maintains a frontal attack against the Catholic Church – has prohibited processions in the streets. To date, religious activities are still limited and only take place indoors, in the gardens or courtyards of the temples.
“Before we used to go out to the streets and make a tour of the communities, but now we don’t. We have to do it inside the church, and that diminishes popular religiosity a little, because people liked the procession. Now, we only pray and read the stations (different episodes of Christ’s passion) inside the church,” says Marcos, 31, who collaborates with the biblical readings of the Stations of the Cross in his church in one of the eastern neighborhoods of Managua.
Police keep vigilance in the parishes
Aurelio, 35, is a parish coordinator and is responsible for planning, executing and evaluating activities in his parish in the capital. He says that parishioners are exposed all the time to police and plainclothes people who hang around the church.
“We already know who are the ones who come in civilian clothes, recently there was a kermesse and we saw them there. They take pictures, they see who is there and what is being done. The priest should provide information so that they are not surprised that they see people entering and leaving the temple, but they stay on Saturdays and Sundays,” said Aurelio.
In the last three years, the parishioner adds, they have tried to keep their faith “intact” and adapt to the circumstances.
“Now we have to accommodate ourselves inside a parish and it is not at all comfortable to make a Stations of the Cross inside the church,” Aurelio points out.
This devout Catholic points out that the measure affects more those faithful who, due to illness or advanced age, are unable to get to church and were expecting the Stations of the Cross to pass through their homes.
Easter Week with 14,000 police officers on the streets
The National Police, the main repressive and spying arm of the dictatorship, will deploy some 14,000 agents during Holy Week, so these parishioners do not rule out that they will continue with their surveillance work in churches.
Unlike previous years, Marcos perceives less police surveillance around his church, although he does not rule out that during the Semana Mayor the police will send their agents.
When we started to do them (the Stations of the Cross) inside the church,” Marcosemphasizes , “there was a police presence in the surrounding area, with patrols installed, but this year I have not seen anything. I think it is because they already know that the Stations of the Cross take place inside the church, since they receive a weekly report of the activities.
According to the report by researcher Martha Patricia Molina, entitled Nicaragua: A persecuted church?during 2024 the regime banned at least 4800 religious activities in the country. Among these activities are important religious traditions such as the Lenten and Holy Week processions, which are an integral part of the culture and devotion of the Nicaraguan people.
Janeth is a 44-year-old housewife from the municipality of La Concepción, Masaya, who likes to participate in the religious activities of Holy Week, but sometimes she thinks that she does not want to attend anymore for fear of being “booked”.
“For me, attending processions is a way of expressing my faith and it is what I try to teach my youngest daughter. I don’t understand why the government keeps persecuting us. It seems unfair to me,” complains Janeth.
Nicaragua ranks among the 78 countries in the world where Christians are not safe from persecution, according to the World Persecution List 2025 prepared by Open Doors, a non-governmental organization based in the Netherlands.
In July 2024, the UN Group of Experts on Human Rights in Nicaragua (GHREN), denounced in one of its reports that the dictatorship maintains “systematic” attacks against the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations.
Meanwhile, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (Uscirf), in its 2025 report, recommended that the U.S. government list Nicaragua as a “country of special concern”.
In 2024, conditions of religious freedom in Nicaragua “remained abysmal” and the dictatorship, Uscirf adds, continued its offensive against religious freedom through arbitrary detention, imprisonment and exile of religious leaders and the faithful, the cancellation of the legal personality of religious organizations, and the harassment and intimidation of the faithful.
