Religion in Nicaragua
[4] The bishops are expected to lend their authority to important state occasions, and their pronouncements on national issues are closely followed.
[4] A large part of the education system, in particular the private institutions that serve most upper- and middle-class students, is controlled by Catholic bodies.
[4] Most localities, from the capital of Managua to small rural communities, honor patron saints, selected from the Catholic calendar, with annual fiestas.
[4] Against this background, it is not surprising that the Sandinista government provided free public transportation so that 500,000 Nicaraguans, a substantial part of the national population, could see Pope John Paul II when he visited Managua in 1983.
[4] Urbanites, women, and members of the upper and middle classes are the most likely to be practicing Catholics, that is those who attend mass, receive the sacraments, and perform special devotions with some degree of regularity.
[4] Religious beliefs and practices of the masses, although more or less independent of the institutional church, do not entail the syncretic merger of Catholic and pre-Columbian elements common in some other parts of Latin America.
[4] Prayers are directed to a relevant saint asking for some benefit, such as curing an illness, in exchange for ritual payment, such as carrying a cross in an annual procession.
[4] Set in a corner or on a table and surrounded with candles, flowers, or other decorations, a cuadro becomes the centerpiece of a small domestic shrine.
[4] The high point of Nicaragua's religious calendar for the masses is neither Christmas nor Easter, but La Purísima, a week of festivities in early December dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, during which elaborate altars to the Virgin Mary are constructed in homes and workplaces.
[4] The Moravian Church, established in the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua in the late nineteenth century, is the dominant faith among the population of the region.
[4] Known for ecstatic forms of worship, energetic evangelization, and the strict personal morality demanded of members, the Pentecostal faiths flourished among the urban and rural poor.
[4] In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Roman Christian Base Communities (Comunidades Eclesiásticas de Base—CEBs) provided the FSLN with vital political support among the urban poor.
[4] An explosive church-state conflict developed, during which the bishops more or less openly allied with the Sandinistas' political enemies and the FSLN struggled vainly to contain the influence of the institutional church.
[4] Most Pentecostal leaders, reflecting the conservative attitudes of the United States denominations with which they were affiliated, were neutral toward the Sandinistas but generally adopted a public stance that was apolitical.
[4] The time the Sandinistas left power in 1990, church/state relations were considerably smoother than they had been in the early 1980s and mid-1980s, in part because the Contra war, which intensified conflict over religion, was winding down.
The law establishes education in the country as secular but recognizes the right of private schools to be religiously oriented.
[6] In 2022, Christian Solidarity Worldwide published findings showing that religious believers faced harassment and detention as part of a wider crackdown on civil liberties.
[13] In 15 September 2023, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights urged Ortega's government to end the continuous persecution against the Catholic Church after concerns of the treatment of priests were raised.
