Ireland Stand Up

Imagine living in a country where your Catholic bishops cannot safely travel to Rome to meet the Pope because they fear their own government might refuse to let them return. This is the extraordinary situation now confronting the Church in Nicaragua. Bishop Carlos Enrique Herrera Gutiérrez, president of the Nicaraguan Bishops' Conference, has confirmed that the Holy See has postponed the country's ad limina visit until 2027, with no date yet fixed, because appropriate conditions do not exist. An ad limina Apostolorum visit is one of the most important expressions of communion between the bishops of a particular country and the successor of St Peter. Ordinarily held every five years, it allows bishops to report on the condition of their dioceses, meet officials of the Roman Curia and confer personally with the Pope. Nicaragua's bishops last made this visit in 2017. Nine years later, four of the country's nine active bishops are living in exile. Among them is Bishop Rolando Álvarez, whose courageous resistance to the Ortega regime resulted in imprisonment, a 26-year prison sentence and eventual expulsion from Nicaragua in January 2024. Bishop Isidoro Mora was expelled alongside him, while Bishop Silvio Báez and Bishop Herrera have also been forced into exile. The problem facing the remaining bishops is painfully simple. A priest still serving in Nicaragua told EWTN News that if the bishops travelled to Rome, the government might prevent them from returning, leaving the country's Catholics without a single resident bishop. That is a fear reported by clergy, rather than an announced government decision, nevertheless, given the regime's established record of expelling bishops and restricting the Church's activities, it is hardly an unreasonable concern. Just consider the implications: A bishop is not simply the local administrator of an international religious organisation. Through episcopal consecration, he receives the fullness of the sacrament of Holy Orders and is entrusted with the pastoral care of a particular Church. As the Second Vatican Council teaches in Lumen Gentium, bishops are the visible principle and foundation of unity in their particular Churches, exercising their ministry in communion with the Roman Pontiff. To drive a bishop from his diocese is therefore not merely to remove an inconvenient public figure. It is to attack the visible structure of Catholic ecclesial life. The consequences are already being felt. According to EWTN's reporting, the regime continues to prohibit ordinations in four dioceses whose bishops are absent. Such restrictions threaten the Church's ability to provide priests and sustain ordinary sacramental life. There is a particularly cruel irony here. The ad limina visit exists to strengthen the communion between local bishops and the Pope. Yet the Nicaraguan government has created circumstances in which exercising that communion through an ordinary journey to Rome could place the very survival of the local episcopate at risk. The bishops who remain must therefore exercise an extraordinary form of pastoral prudence: foregoing a journey to the successor of Peter precisely because their first responsibility is to remain with the flock entrusted to them. Meanwhile, Bishop Herrera, himself expelled in November 2024, was able to meet Pope Leo XIV in Rome on 12 October. There is something deeply revealing about the fact that the president of a national bishops' conference can meet the Pope only because he has already been driven out of his own country. We rightly speak about religious freedom in terms of conscience, worship and the rights of believers. But Nicaragua reminds us that persecution can also operate through the systematic dismantling of the institutions which make ordinary religious life possible. Remove bishops, obstruct ordinations, intimidate clergy and prevent normal communication with Rome, and a government can progressively suffocate the Church without formally declaring Christianity illegal. The Ortega–Murillo regime may be able to control Nicaragua's borders. It cannot determine the spiritual communion of the Catholic Church, nor extinguish the obligations of her shepherds towards their people. The tragedy is that Nicaragua's bishops must now choose between visiting Peter and remaining physically present with the sheep. That such a choice should exist in 2026 ought to trouble anyone who takes religious liberty seriously. ewtnnews.com/world/americas/…