No Easter processions for Nicaraguans this year: They will have to celebrate behind the closed doors of their churches or from the comfort of their own couches.

President Ortega, escalating his campaign against the Catholic Church, cited security concerns in banning Holy Week celebrations in the country.  Locals, instead of participating in traditional community gatherings such as popular street processions on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, will be forced to celebrate privately.

The director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Ryan Berg, tells the Sun that banning Easter celebrations “is just another phase in the Ortega-Murillo regime’s incessant campaign against the Catholic Church.” 

Mr. Ortega is closing religious centers in Nicaragua because they represent a “potential alternative center of political and social organization” to the regime, Mr. Berg says. The Catholic Church “is a particularly potent threat” for its closeness to the country’s opposition movement, he adds.

According to the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights, the actions of Mr. Ortega, a Marxist, reflects his aspiration to dismantle the Catholic Church, end all domestic religious rights, and impose the regime’s beliefs on a country that has deep Catholic roots.

“An unprecedented event that shows that we live in a country where religious persecution is a real risk,” is how the Nicaraguan Center, in a statement, described the ban on Easter celebrations. It called on religious leaders to break their silence and defend the members of the church as Nicaraguans face “their darkest days.”

Mr. Ortega broke ties with the Vatican last month, ordering the Vatican Embassy at Managua to close and shutting down the Nicaraguan embassy at Rome’s Holy See. In March, Pope Francis said Mr. Ortega’s administration is a “rude dictatorship” comparable to the “1917 Communist dictatorship, or that of Hitler in 1935.” 

“With great respect, I have no choice but to think about an imbalance in the person who leads” Nicaragua, the pontiff told the Argentinian newspaper Infobae in an interview.

More than 30 religious ceremonies have been canceled in the country since the start of 2023, a Nicaraguan lawyer and human rights advocate, Martha Patricia Molina, told the Nicaraguan newspaper Confidencial. 

In addition, the regime sentenced the bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando Alvarez, to 26 years in prison last month after he refused to move to America along with 200 political prisoners as part of a prisoner release. Mr. Alvarez was also stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship. 

A Nicaraguan political analyst who is exiled in Costa Rica, Eliseo Nuñez, told Reuters that Mr. Ortega is banning religious processions to avoid unrest in the country. “They live in fear and that’s why they impose this terror,” Mr. Nuñez said.

Mr. Ortega seems to be going back to his communist roots, reviving Karl Marx’s infamous phrase: “Religion is the opium of the people. It is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless conditions.” 

A former Marxist rebel, Mr. Ortega returned to power in 2006 by concealing his communist leanings and converting to Catholicism to attract the highly religious population. “Jesus Christ is my hero now,” he said during the campaign. 

Nevertheless, relations between the church and Managua have been deteriorating since 2018, when Mr. Ortega violently cracked down on anti-government protests. As the Vatican attempted to act as mediator, some Catholic leaders in Nicaragua gave shelter to protesters in their churches, reigniting Mr. Ortega’s war on the church.

Dozens of religious leaders have been arrested or have fled the country since 2018. Last year, two congregations of nuns, including the Missionaries of Charity that was founded by Mother Teresa, were expelled from Nicaragua. 

“I don’t believe in the popes or kings,” Mr. Ortega said last month. “I never had love nor respect toward the majority of religious priests.”