Unidentified Univision correspondent tells hearing Nicaragua is repressing faith communities, cites expulsions and arrests

An unidentified Univision correspondent told a hearing that religious freedom in Nicaragua is under sustained attack, citing expulsions, arrests, church attacks and mass closures of faith-based groups.

The witness, who identified themselves as a Univision correspondent with firsthand experience in Nicaragua, said Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo once played a major public role in elections and argued the Sandinista leadership of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has since sought to replace independent religious activity with control by the regime. "There is a very clear example called Nicaragua," the speaker said.

The witness attributed several concrete harms to the government: "260 religious figures have been expelled," the speaker said, and "1,000 Catholic churches have been attacked," which the witness added was "according to the Vatican." The speaker also said that in 2024 evangelical pastors associated with a group the transcript names as Mountain Gateway Ministries were "arrested on fake charges and were sentenced to decades in prison just for bringing the gospel."

The witness said that in 2025 certain nuns (referred to in the transcript as "Clarissa's nuns") were forced to flee their convents and that nuns who had served people at El Mercado Oriental had to leave. The speaker said that Holy Week and Lent processions the witness once covered were "completely banned" for the last three years and alleged that "more than 6,000 faith based NGOs have been shut down."

The speaker framed these points as empirical claims rather than opinion and urged stronger U.S. attention. "Otherwise, The United States is going to take care of that because there is a new sheriff in town," the witness said, and added a direct denunciation of Rosario Murillo, saying she was "the devil herself." No response or rebuttal to these assertions appears in the transcript.

The speaker closed by praising U.S. leadership and thanking the chairman for the opportunity to relay the message to Nicaraguans seeking protection for religious freedom.

The testimony in the transcript records claims and allegations by a single anonymous witness; the article reports them as the witness presented them and attributes numerical claims to the witness or, where the speaker did so, to outside sources (the Vatican). The hearing transcript in this record does not include independent verification of those numbers or any response from Nicaraguan officials.