Rosario Murillo, who now officially shares presidential power with her husband Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, used a state broadcast Tuesday to label Catholic priests who oppose the regime as "servants of Satan", the latest salvo in a years-long campaign against the Church that has included arrests, banishments, asset seizures, and a 26-year prison sentence for one bishop.

The remarks, published in transcript form by the regime-affiliated outlet El19Digital, landed with the force of a regime that no longer bothers to disguise its contempt for organized Christianity within its borders.

What Murillo described as a righteous denunciation reads, in plain terms, like a communist government official demonizing clergy for the crime of dissent. Independent investigations have documented more than 1,000 separate acts of persecution against Christians and the Catholic Church in Nicaragua over the past six years. The regime's crackdown accelerated sharply beginning in 2022, and Murillo's Tuesday broadcast suggests no end is in sight.

What Murillo said

The co-president's language was sweeping, theatrical, and personal. She did not name individual priests but made clear she was addressing clergy who have spoken against the Ortega regime. As Breitbart reported, Murillo told viewers:

"Let them see themselves in the mirror of their own creation, malicious, pernicious, and anti-Christian, even as they appear in disguise in this blatant competition of egos, one and all. Those who appear in disguise, who have nothing of a shepherd, or a prophet, or a visionary, what they possess is malice, envy, ambition, and greed. A competition of evils."

She escalated from there. Murillo questioned how the Church could claim to represent love while, in her telling, promoting "hatred and jealousy" among its own members:

"But then again, how can they call themselves 'People of Love' when all they've ever done is promote hatred and jealousy, even among themselves, within their own professions or trades, attack those who stood out more, attack those who knew more, attack those who also had more responsibilities, and serve the devil? Servants of Satan, that is what they have been, and what they are."

That phrase, "servants of Satan", coming from a head of state about her own country's priests, would provoke outrage in most of the Western world. In Managua, it is simply the current posture of the government.

A campaign rooted in 2018

The persecution traces back to 2018, when Nicaragua's Catholic Church supported a wave of nationwide anti-communist protests against the Ortega regime. The government response left more than 300 people dead. The Church's role in backing the demonstrators earned it a target on its back that has never been removed.

Since then, the regime has banned Holy Week processions, arrested and banished Church members, and forcibly seized Church assets, bank accounts, universities, and media outlets among them. Beginning in 2022, the crackdown intensified dramatically.

That year, Murillo publicly accused Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa of having committed "sins against spirituality." Álvarez, an outspoken critic of the regime, soon found his parish under a two-week police siege. The raid ended with his arrest. He was convicted of "treason" and sentenced to 26 years in prison.

In early 2024, the regime banished Álvarez to the Vatican and stripped him of his Nicaraguan nationality. A bishop, born in Nicaragua, serving Nicaraguan parishioners, rendered stateless by his own government for the act of speaking against it.

Murillo's broader aim

Nicaraguan-Spanish priest Rafael Aragón warned in December that Murillo's ambitions extend beyond punishing dissent. Aragón said Murillo seeks to "control" both Catholic and Protestant churches in Nicaragua through her actions, steering Christianity away from "what she considers to be Western culture dominated by Christianity."

That framing puts the regime's behavior in a different and more troubling light. It suggests the goal is not merely to silence critics but to reshape religious life itself, to subordinate faith to the state's ideological preferences. That is a pattern familiar to anyone who has watched communist governments operate, from Cuba to China.

Murillo's Tuesday broadcast also took aim at Nicaraguan exiles. She ridiculed those who have fled the country, referring to "the Commander", a clear reference to Ortega, who "put them on the plane."

"We, the Nicaraguan people, did not send them. Their masters! But when we say no one sent them, it is because they themselves chose that fate of being 'kites without tails,' because that is what they are: kites without tails, still seeking to do harm, using words that don't even suit them."

She also accused unnamed opponents of manufacturing victims during the 2018 protests, staging scenes for cameras and then distributing the footage.

"I will never forget that pernicious, evil scheme, where some acted as lookouts to signal that something was about to happen, and then they themselves created the victims to photograph them, film them, and spread the footage throughout the upside-down world."

More than 300 people died in those protests. Murillo's characterization of that death toll as a fabrication speaks for itself.

Co-president, co-persecutor

Since 2025, Murillo has officially shared presidential authority with Ortega as "co-president." The title formalized what had long been obvious: she is not a ceremonial figure. She is a co-equal driver of regime policy, including the campaign against the Church.

The numbers tell the story with cold clarity. Over 1,000 documented acts of persecution in six years. A bishop sentenced to 26 years, then expelled and stripped of citizenship. Holy Week processions, one of the most visible expressions of Catholic life in Latin America, banned outright. Church bank accounts emptied. Universities seized. Media shuttered.

And now, from the regime's own broadcast, the co-president of Nicaragua calling priests "servants of Satan."

Where is the outrage?

The international response to Nicaragua's religious persecution has been, by any honest measure, inadequate. Álvarez's imprisonment and banishment drew some diplomatic protest, but the regime paid no lasting price. The persecution continued. It deepened. And Murillo now feels comfortable enough to broadcast her contempt for the clergy on state media, in terms that would have been unthinkable from a Western head of state.

The pattern is familiar. Communist regimes attack the Church because the Church represents a source of moral authority outside the state's control. Ortega and Murillo have followed that playbook with precision, first targeting clergy who supported protests, then expanding the crackdown to institutions, then to religious observance itself.

Aragón's warning about Murillo's desire to "control" both Catholic and Protestant churches fits neatly into that trajectory. The regime is not content to punish past dissent. It wants to own the space the Church occupies.

When a government calls its priests servants of the devil, it is not making a theological argument. It is making a political threat. And in Nicaragua, political threats from the Ortega-Murillo regime carry the weight of prison sentences, exile, and the seizure of everything a church owns.

The faithful in Nicaragua already know what that means. The question is whether anyone outside Nicaragua's borders cares enough to do something about it, or whether a communist regime can persecute Christians in broad daylight, on camera, and face nothing but silence.