Merry Christmas, bishops, from Nicaragua’s little dictator

Is Nicaragua trying to outrun Cuba and Venezuela for the title of region’s nastiest communist regime?

Here’s how dictator Daniel Ortega, the man the great Ronald Reagan once called “the little dictator,” celebrated his version of Christmas:

According to El Pais of Spain:

On Wednesday, December 20, the Nicaraguan police intercepted Bishop Isidro del Carmen Mora Ortega, when he was on his way to officiate the confirmations of 230 parishioners in the Santa Cruz parish, located in La Cruz de Río Grande, a remote municipality in the South Caribbean Coast. The bishop was arrested, and his whereabouts are still unknown.

This is the latest episode of persecution against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, where attacks have escalated over the past year. Since 2018 — when mass protests against the government broke out — the Catholic Church in Nicaragua has suffered 740 attacks by the Sandinista regime, according to Martha Patricia Molina, a Nicaraguan lawyer and author of the study Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church?

The bishop’s crime, according to the regime, was horrendous:

What triggered the arrest of Monsignor Mora Ortega was that he publicly expressed solidarity with Bishop [Rolando] Álvarez [another jailed bishop], who is isolated in a cell within the notorious La Modelo prison. “I would like to express the greetings of the Episcopal Conference. We are always united, praying for this beloved Diocese of Matagalpa, praying for Monsignor Rolando, praying for the journey of each one of you (his parishioners). We’re united in prayer, in communion, in faith, in love, in tenderness,” said the religious figure, during the mass commemorating the 99th anniversary of the creation of the diocese.

El Pais also noted:

A day after Bishop Isidro del Carmen Mora Ortega said that the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua (CEN) “remains in prayer” for Monsignor Rolando Álvarez — a political prisoner held by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo — the police arrested him. They took him away on Wednesday, December 20, when he was heading to his parish in the municipality of La Cruz de Río Grande, along the South Caribbean Coast.

Monsignor Mora Ortega is now the second bishop who has been arrested by the Sandinista National Liberation Front’s regime. President Ortega and his wife, Vice President Murillo, have redoubled their persecution of the Catholic Church. They are specifically targeting the highest ecclesiastical authorities. First, the presidential couple ordered the arrest of Monsignor Álvarez, head of the Diocese of Matagalpa, and sentenced him to 26 years in prison in February of 2023. This was after he refused exile in the United States. Bishop Álvarez, a symbol of resistance against the Sandinista dictatorship, was charged with the crimes of “treason,” undermining national integrity and “propagating false news.”

He’s really going after them, not embarrassed a bit about doing it so crudely, knowing very well that the wokester Catholic Church of Pope Francis isn’t going to hold him up to any significant scorn or shame, and he has nothing to fear from Joe Biden up north, or any of the other major countries in his region. 

Pope Francis did criticize the arrest of the first bishop last March as crude and Hitler-y, when asked about it by a reporter, but he hasn’t issued any statements about it, and he has yet to say anything at all about the arrest of the second one for saying he wanted people to pray for the first one, which was five days ago.

Needless to say, the Biden administration has done nothing, and the big regional powers such as Mexico and Brazil, both led by leftists, aren’t getting involved.

With the coast clear, Ortega is whipping out the “treason” card and jailing major church leaders in that country, just in time to make their Christmas as bleak as his.

Ortega, note, likes to throw the “treason” charge around a lot. He also issued one to the local organizer of the Miss Universe Pageant for the “crime” of getting a pretty, popular, devoutly Catholic, local girl to win the title of Miss Universe. After the arrest warrant was issued, the organizer promptly quit that pageant organization and declined to return to the country, as has the beauty queen herself, knowing full well that Ortega has a treason dungeon ready for them, too.

The weak, pathetic response from the West is quite a shift from the days of the great Ronald Reagan, who financed a Contra rebellion to force Ortega into holding free and fair elections — which promptly got him booted in 1990. He got elected again decades later, claiming to be a changed man, and then the mask was off.

Ortega’s not going to let that happen again, so he’s throwing every possible source of goodness in his country into prison.

He’s also using his dictatorship to make himself quite a threat to the U.S., becoming a major organizer of human trafficking organizations and migrant caravans headed north, flying them in by the tens of thousands from countries such as Haiti (but not just Haiti), and pointing them northward. ABC News reported that France has just intercepted a suspicious plane from India headed to Nicaragua, loaded with unaccompanied minors.

If this isn’t reason for the U.S. to get rid of this guy, what is? 

But “devout Catholic” Joe isn’t saying anything about that nasty game Ortega is playing, nor the multiple arrests of the country’s Catholic bishops and even the targeting of the country’s international beauty queen. Ortega knows the cat’s away, so it’s time for his kind to play. 

What a Christmas he’s created for them. Any questions as to why so many of them now want to head north?

Image: Library of Congress, via Picryl // no known restrictions