In a new attack against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, the dictatorship of President Da-niel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, has frozen the Church’s retirement fund for priests, according to lawyer and researcher Martha Patricia Molina.
The lawyer is the author of the report “Nicaragua: A Perse-cuted Church?”, which catalogs the more than 500 attacks against the Church in the country since 2018.
“Elderly priests are not re-ceiving their pensions from the national insurance fund for priests, the product of years of contributing, due to the bank accounts of the Catholic Church being blocked,” Molina wrote on the social media site X
“The national insurance fund for priests is an institution that was created more than 20 years ago by the CEN [Nicaraguan Bishops’ Conference] intending a retirement fund for priests. It’s not exactly insurance, because it doesn’t cover health issues or other Social Security issues. It’s intended as a retirement fund,” Molina explained to the Nicara-guan newspaper Confidencial Digital.
The fund receives $150 a year from active priests, parishes, and Church institutions in addition to what is collected on Ash Wednes-day.