Nicaragua's "little dictator," who was dubbed that by the great Ronald Reagan, has cooked up a nasty new scheme in the Catholic country he'd like to turn into a Marxist hellhole: Canceling Holy Week processions.

According to Catholic Arena:

People carrying around a statue and going to church should be no threat to any reasonable leader, but things have gotten bad in Nicaragua, so Ortega's obviously afraid of people congregating together, around the idea of Jesus breaking the bonds of evil and opening the gates of Heaven, which is what the traditional Latin American procession is about. In his mind, it could too easily turn into a mass procession against himself and his detested regime, in the role of 'evil.'

Not even Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela has been doing that -- the Castro regime in Cuba, though, has for decades. Ortega's going for the full Castro, depriving his socialism-impoverished people of even their comforts of religion.

He's also been throwing priests and even bishops in jail, on the same crazed hatred of religious and cultural Catholicism.

He's been doing it for a while -- this video is from 2022:

Which is ironic. Once upon a time, Ortega courted and gathered support from leftist liberation theology priests and bishops, even proclaiming his pro-life stance in the election that brought him to power a second time, after his disastrous referendum of 1990, which saw him booted from power.

He's since spent his time organizing "migrant warfare" on the U.S. the better to get potential dissidents out of his country, but also to make money.

His country actually has a free trade pact with the U.S., but is now subject to 18% tariffs, which should cut his cash streams.

Nicaragua's opposition is reportedly cheering the tariffs from President Trump.

According to CounterPunch, a virulently rabid left-wing publication:

A minimum 10 per cent tariff on exports to the US will hit low-income countries throughout the region. But exports from Nicaragua have been saddled with an even higher tariff of 18 per cent. Delighted opponents of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government have blamed it, rather than Trump, for the country receiving this additional penalty. However, simple examination of the figures shows that Nicaragua’s tariff was calculated in the same way as every other country’s.

They are likely hoping it will finally defund the monster and leave him unable to pay his goons, which may get him thrown out.

Which explains why he's getting mean and oppressive with the Holy Week celebrations, which he views as a political threat.

Obviously, he's going to keep going, jailing and imprisioning people for religious activity and paying for ever greater numbers of goons. He will probably hold his hat out to China some more, though the canal project he's been working with them on, has reportedly not gone well. He's probably qualified much of his nation for asylum on religous persecution grounds, which could have been intentional, given what he does, but more likely, is the act of a dictator flailing, threatened by a religious procession over a 2,000 year-old event that happened in another part of the world.

While there's little likelihood asylum will be extended, Nicaragua will be full of returning migrants from the U.S. who aren't going to be happy about much of anything. They, along with religious processions, form a threat to his detested regime as he sees it.

Too bad there's no Ronald Reagan to fund the contras, or George Bush Sr. to send in the Marines to 'Noreiga' the thug. But there are the Nicaraguan people, which to Ortega is threat enough.

What we should be seeing is Pope Francis speaking out about this outrage, but it's likely he's too sick, and unfortunately, too unwilling to take a cue from Pope Benedict XVI's example, and gracefully pass the papal chair to someone more vigorous who will. He's also been coddling socialists during his entire papacy, meaning, it's a moral bridge too far. A John Paul II, who did rip into Ortega during his last regime as well as condemn liberation theology, he is not.

We also ought to see more outrage from the Jesuits and other religious orders that in the past collaborated with Ortega, only to see this kind of persecution. That's what you get when you get into bed with a Marxist viper, but they're so socialist themselves, they aren't going to admit this.

In the meantime, we are seeing what looks like a significant downhill slide in civil liberties and cultural freedom in Nicaragua. Banning religious processions during Holy Week is simply an outrage as this is Nicaragua's culture -- and about all they've got left. Doing this on top of previous waves of religious persecution is setting the stage for another Oscar Romero situation, as happened years ago in El Salvador when goons killed the man as he said Mass, and which the left loudly still rallies around even as most go hypocritically silent on Nicaragua today.

It may just make Nicaraguans more determined to oppose him. With neither the Church or the U.S. defending them, Ortega is going to get nastier and uglier as his regime totters. It's already going downhill fast.

Image: Screen shot from X video