Over the weekend, Pope Leo XIV received the exiled president of the Nicaraguan bishops’ conference, Bishop Carlos Enrique Herrera Gutiérrez, who was expelled from the Central American country by the Daniel Ortega dictatorship in November 2024.

On Aug. 23, the Vatican press office said that “this morning the Holy Father received in audience His Eminence Carlos Enrique Herrera Gutiérrez, OFM, bishop of Jinotega (Nicaragua).”

As is customary with these types of audiences, the Vatican did not offer further details about the meeting.

Herrera has been president of the Nicaraguan Bishops’ Conference since 2022. In 2024, under intense persecution by the dictatorship of Ortega and his wife and co-president, Rosario Murillo, Herrera was expelled from the country after criticizing a pro-Ortega mayor who interfered with a Mass by blasting loud music in front of the cathedral.

ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, confirmed that after the bishop’s expulsion, he was taken in by a Franciscan community in Guatemala.

Nicaragua has nine bishops, four of whom live in exile. In addition to Herrera, those forced to leave the country are Silvio Báez, auxiliary bishop of Managua; Rolando Álvarez, bishop of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of Estelí; and Isidoro Mora, bishop of Siuna.

Before being deported, Álvarez spent 17 months in detention, first under house arrest and then in prison, and was stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship.

Among the many attacks on the Church perpetrated by the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship, the then-apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, was expelled from Nicaragua in March 2022. This led to the severance of diplomatic relations with the Holy See.

In March 2023, Pope Francis harshly criticized Ortega, stating that he must be suffering from some personal “imbalance” and comparing his regime to the “crude dictatorships” of the early 20th century.

“I believe that Pope Leo XIV will be a true lion, a defender and champion of the faith of the Nicaraguan people, with the strength of a lion and the humility of a lamb,” Arturo McFields Yescas, Nicaragua’s former ambassador to the Organization of American States, who is in exile for denouncing the dictatorship’s excesses, told ACI Prensa in May.

Although Pope Leo XIV has not yet spoken publicly about Nicaragua, McFields Yescas commented that currently “there is much hope” because despite the dictatorship’s relentless attacks, “the faith remains free and remains strengthened in the midst of persecution.”

One of the regime’s latest attacks has been the confiscation of the iconic St. Joseph School in Jinotepe, an event described by Martha Molina, a Nicaraguan lawyer and researcher in exile, as “an outrage against religious freedom.”

Molina is the author of the report “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church,” which in its latest edition reports nearly 1,000 attacks by the dictatorship against the Church.

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