Church and State in Nicaragua

Ian Bateson has written an interesting article in Foreign Affairs informing his readers how Daniel Ortega, the President of Nicaragua, has cozied up to the Catholic Church since 2006, despite having an adversarial relationship from the 1970s to the 1990s (See Church and State in Nicaragua: Letter From Managua). Nicaragua was ruled by Samoza family from late 1930s to 1979. The Samoza dictatorship was supported by the US and the Catholic Church. It was the US Marines which supported the first grab of power by the Samozas and the support remained strong for forty years. The Catholic Church also had cordial relations with Samozas. It was recognized as the official religion in the 1950 Constitution. As Bateson explains, Church had no problem with Somozas and did not want godless socialists/communists to succeed until the late 1970s when it started criticizing Anastasio Samoza:

There has never been a real separation of church and state in Nicaragua. Under the Somoza family, a dynasty of brutal U.S.-backed dictators who ruled the country from 1936 until 1979, gifts and favors flowed freely from the country’s rulers to its religious leadership, which rarely criticized the government. As late as 1977, as a revolution brewed against Anastasio Somoza, church leaders led masses across the country to pray for the ailing president’s health.

Ortega, a socialist and an atheist, led a revolutionary insurgency against Samoza rule. He was the head of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN), was trained in Cuba and had Cuban support in his fight against the government. In 1979, the Sandinistas were able to overthrow the Somoza government and Ortega ruled Nicaragua until 1990. His time in power was difficult as the US was bent on ending his government. President Reagen supported the Contras, who were fighting a vicious civil war against Ortega's government, even when ordered not to do so by the Congress. This resulted in the biggest political scandal during the Reagan administration (the Iran Contra Affair). The Catholic Church also opposed Ortega and Sandinistas for most of their time in power and defrocked the priests that supported them. The Catholic bishops accused the Sandinistas of supressing Church's teachings, allowing abortions and violating human rights while the Sandinistas accused the Church of toeing US line and ignoring the widespread atrocities of the Contras. Ortega lost the election in 1990 and was out of power. He moderated his policies but still lost the 1996 and 2001 elections. However, recognizing the power of the Church, Ortega adopted conservative policies before the 2006 elections, Bateson writes:

As Ortega turned on the men of the cloth he once worked with, he found allies among other church figures. Cardinal Miguel Obando Bravo is one of them. Like Cardenal, Obando’s relationship with the FSLN has transformed. In the 1980s, Ortega’s government accused Obando of being the “arch enemy of the revolution” and of seeking to obtain U.S. support for anti-government contras. The animosity was mutual and longstanding: days before the 1996 presidential election, which Ortega lost, Obando delivered a church sermon in which he likened Ortega to a biblical snake.

That relationship underwent a reversal in 2005. That April, the Vatican accepted Obando’s resignation as head of the Archdiocese of Managua, and Obando’s relations with Ortega warmed. Months later, he officiated Ortega and Murillo’s marriage, and the next year, he campaigned for them during the run-up to the 2006 presidential election. 

It is not clear why Obando changed his position. Some have speculated that he did so to protect Roberto Rivas, a man many believe to be his biological son, from official pressure. “Obando was forced to cozy up to Ortega because of the corruption of Rivas, who is a kind of adopted son of [Obando]… Rivas made millions of dollars illicitly and put the cardinal in an awkward position,” the former Education Minister and Opus Dei minister Humberto Belli told El País in 2009.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and Cardinal Miguel Obando in Managua, May 2009.
Source:  Church and State in Nicaragua: Letter From Managua

If Obando’s motivations were unclear, there is little ambiguity about the advantage his support gave the Ortegas. As the demand for religious policies, such as bans on abortion, grew in Central America, the blessing of the Nicaraguan church’s former leader gave Ortega the credibility to lead that movement in his country. “In the past, [the Ortegas] were against the church, but then they understood that made them unpopular,” Cristiana Chamorro, a daughter of former President Violeta Chamorro, who defeated Ortega in the 1990 elections, said in May. “Now, [Obando] is the family priest.”

But after years in political exile, Ortega needed to prove his conservative religious credentials before the 2006 elections. So 11 days before the vote, he threw his party’s support behind a proposed ban on all forms of abortion—one that would imprison women and healthcare professionals involved in ending pregnancies. Lawmakers passed the measure quickly, before Ortega won the presidency.

Since then, Ortega has consolidated his power, establishing control of the legislature and the courts by outmaneuvering the opposition. Most media outlets are in the hands of the government or its allies. Nicaragua’s electoral commission has consistently issued rulings that favor Ortega’s party, and in 2014, Nicaraguan lawmakers passed a constitutional amendment removing presidential term limits.

The full article can be read here. In 2016, Ortega won the third presidential election in a row.