80-year-old Catholic bishop detained in Nicaragua amid crackdown on Christians: watchdog

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, July 07, 2026

An 80-year-old Roman Catholic bishop and three other Catholic leaders were detained in Nicaragua last week amid an ongoing crackdown against Christians in the country.

Bishop Juan Abelardo Mata Guevara, who serves as bishop emeritus of the Diocese of Estelí and has denounced religious persecution in Nicaragua, was first detained by the National Police on the afternoon of June 29, according to a report from the United Kingdom-based group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW).

Mata Guevara was then taken to a maximum-security prison roughly 130 miles away in Managua and reportedly released later that evening before being detained again the next morning until 4 p.m.

Mata Guevara, who has largely remained private since retiring in 2020, reportedly celebrated evening mass at La Cruz del Calvario Church on June 28, during which he condemned the treatment of Christian leaders in Nicaragua who have been exiled or placed under house arrest.

A police presence has remained around Mata Guevara's home since his release, according to CSW, and sources who spoke to the persecution watchdog believe his comments during the service were reported to police by spies in the church who are aligned with the government.

Three other Catholic leaders — Deacon Wilfred Aráuz Rodríguez, Father Francisco Morales of La Cruz del Calvario Church and Father Rigoberto Delgadillo Sánchez of the Santuario Divino Niño Parish — were also detained for approximately 12 hours on June 30. The police chief reportedly arrested Aráuz Rodríguez while accompanied by masked men.

Silvio José Báez, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Managua, said in an X post that he was "deeply outraged and absolutely condemns the aggression committed by the regime's police against my brother Mons. Juan Abelardo Mata, emeritus bishop of Estelí."

"These cowardly actions only demonstrate the weakness and irrationality of a criminal dictatorship," he added.

CSW, which has documented 12 cases of arbitrary detentions of both Protestant and Roman Catholic leaders in Nicaragua last month alone, condemned the treatment of Mata Guevara and the others. A report CSW released earlier this year documented 309 separate religious freedom violations by the Nicaraguan government against Christians in 2025.

"We call on the Nicaraguan authorities to cease their harassment of the bishop and his associates, including the ongoing surveillance of his home," CSW's Director of Advocacy and Americas Team Leader Anna Lee Stangl said in a statement.

"We also call on the government to end its targeting of religious leaders who speak openly about the situation of human rights in the country, and to instead prioritize addressing the concerns they are sharing."

Nicaragua is ranked No. 32 on Open Doors' 2026 World Watch List of the 50 countries where Christian persecution is most extreme. According to the nonprofit persecution watchdog group, Christians are seen as "destabilizing agents" in the country and increasingly silenced under the dictatorial rule of Co-Presidents Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo.

The Ortega-Murillo government has remained unresponsive to communications from the United Nations and the Organization of American States and has left the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The church in Nicaragua has remained one of the few institutions openly critical of Ortega's government. During mass protests in 2018 against pension reforms, clergy condemned police violence against students.