SW News: Once again, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega has launched a vitriolic attack on the pope and the Catholic Church. During a televised speech on September 28 as part of the 43rd anniversary of the National Police, Ortega said the Church was a “perfect dictatorship”.

The authoritarian ruler also verbally attacked Pope Francis and asked: “Who elects the priests, the bishops, the Pope, the cardinals, how many votes, who gives them to them? If they are going to be democratic, they must begin by electing the Pope, the cardinals, the bishops, with the vote of the population, with the votes of Catholics.”

“That the population elects them and not all taxes, it is a dictatorship, the perfect dictatorship. It is a tyranny, the perfect tyranny,” the 76-year-old president said. He called the Holy Father a “holy tyrant,” and asked: “With what authority do you speak to me about democracy? How many votes did the bishop have from the population to be appointed bishop?”

Ortega, in the past, has publicly attacked the Catholic Church. In September 2021, he called the Catholic bishops “terrorists”, “demons in cassocks” and “satanic babblers”. He also accused the bishops of promoting a “coup d'état” against him.

Reflecting ongoing tensions between his government and the religious institution over the 2018 protests, Ortega in his speech called out the clergy as “coup plotters” working on behalf of “American imperialism.”

Pope Francis had insisted on the importance of having a dialogue with Nicaragua and expressed that it “does not mean that we approve of everything the government does, or that we disapprove.”

Tensions between the Catholic Church and Nicaragua grew in March when Managua expelled the Vatican’s ambassador to the country. Thereafter in August, Bishop Rolando Alvarez was placed under house arrest for “destabilizing and provocative” activities, drawing concern from Pope Francis and criticism from the United States.

Police arrested four priests and two seminarians but did not explain the charges against them. Earlier in June, they expelled Missionaries of Charity nuns and shut down their NGOs.

Ortega, who ruled Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990 and returned to power in 2007, has become more and more authoritarian over the years.