Following last week’s exile of seven priests to Rome, the Nicaraguan dictatorship has arrested two more priests and two laywomen in Estelí and Matagalpa, both dioceses officially led by Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who has been living in exile in Rome since January.

According to the Nicaraguan media outlet Mosaico, on Sunday, Aug. 11, the police arrested Father Denis Martínez García when he was on his way to celebrate Mass in Matagalpa. His whereabouts are unknown.

Father Martínez was a formator at Our Lady of Fatima Interdiocesan Seminary in Managua and on weekends went to Matagalpa to celebrate Mass due to the steep reduction in the number of priests in the diocese as a result of ongoing persecution by the dictatorship.

Mosaico also reported that on Saturday, Aug. 10, Father Leonel Balmaceda, pastor of Jesus of Charity parish in the town of La Trinidad in the Diocese of Estelí, was arrested.

Also on Aug. 10, the police went to the homes of two laywomen and arrested them apparently without cause, according to Mosaico. Their families have no information about their whereabouts.

One of the women was Carmen María Sáenz Martínez, who holds a master’s degree in canon law and worked at the Diocese of Matagalpa on marriage-annulment cases.

The other was Lesbia Gutiérrez, former coordinator of the Urban and Rural Financial Support Program through which the Diocese of Matagalpa’s Caritas (which was shut down by the government) offered loans to small producers.

The arrests occurred just three days after the dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, exiled seven priests to Rome, six of whom belong to the Diocese of Matagalpa.

Martha Patricia Molina, researcher and author of the report “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church?”, said on X in reference to the arrest of Martínez that “the Sandinista dictatorship intends to exterminate the presence of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of #Matagalpa.”

Matagalpa is the diocese of Bishop Álvarez, a human-rights defender and critic of the dictatorship who, beginning in August 2022, was put under house arrest and finally sentenced in February 2023 to 26 years in prison in a questionable judicial process. Bishop Álvarez was deported in January to Rome, where he lives in exile.

Estelí has ​​not had a bishop since mid-2021. Bishop Álvarez was then appointed as apostolic administrator, and in his absence, Father Frutos Valle was appointed as administrator ad omnia in charge of looking after diocesan assets. Father Valle has also been arrested by the dictatorship.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.