Biden is failing to defend religious freedom abroad

This past Thursday there was an interesting exchange between White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and a correspondent for the Catholic Eternal World Television Network. When Jean-Pierre was asked about the White House’s reaction to the latest persecution of Catholics in Nicaragua — the abduction of a bishop, incarceration of priests and seminarians, and the shutting down of Catholic radio stations — her answer was baffling: “There has been a dramatic deterioration of democratic principles and human rights by the regime in Nicaragua including the imprisonment of democratic leaders, members of the political opposition, students and journalists. The Biden-Harris administration finds this unacceptable and condemns these actions.”  

Wait, what? Madam Press Secretary, did you not hear the question?  

Don’t get me wrong. I agree that Daniel Ortega and his thugs are trying to silence “political opponents, students and journalists.” And I’m relieved that the Biden-Harris administration finds this “unacceptable and condemns these actions.” But there is something different going on here that cries out for a response. I’d really like to know what our country’s second Catholic president has to say about Daniel Ortega’s war against the Catholic Church.  

Earlier this summer, Ortega’s government outlawed the missionary order founded by Mother Teresa and expelled the order’s nuns from the country. Their exile followed the expulsion in March of the Vatican’s envoy to Nicaragua, Archbishop Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag. Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who heads the diocese of Matagalpa in Nicaragua, was recently arrested and thrown into jail together with eight of his companions. Police previously arrested seven other priests on trumped up charges. Father Uriel Vallejos went into hiding after the police raided his parish’s radio station and surrounded his residence for several days. The radio station managed by Vallejos was among the Catholic television and radio channels that have recently been shut down by the government. Ortega’s government silenced yet another Catholic radio station earlier this week.   

The United States is a country with an unusually deep commitment to religious liberty. Ours was the first nation to guarantee religious freedom in its constitution. And for over 20 years, we have expressly advanced the cause of international religious freedom. Congress unanimously passed the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) in 1998, establishing the Office of International Religious Freedom in the State Department, led by an IRF Ambassador at Large. IRFA was amended in 2016 to further bolster religious freedom as a foreign policy priority. But today, religious freedom experts warn that the Biden administration is ignoring our responsibility under the IRFA. 

President Biden often remarks on the importance of his Catholic faith. His administration’s tone-deaf response to the plight of persecuted Catholics in Nicaragua, however, is yet more evidence that this administration has little concern for religious freedom — not only here at home but also abroad. 

But the president’s apparent indifference to this scandal doesn’t justify a similar reaction from the American people. There is so much at stake here. Ortega is simultaneously attempting to squash the Catholic Church and democracy — for the simple reason that the Church is upholding democratic rights in a country where its voice is powerful; Nicaragua, after all, is an overwhelmingly Catholic country.  

It’s vital that Americans don’t allow our response to Ortega’s brutality to be influenced by our own political views. Back in the 1980s, Nicaragua’s dictator headed a Sandinista government that was routinely portrayed by liberals as a utopia of social justice. It would be a terrible thing if residual affection for the Sandinistas, and the socialist sympathies of some young Democrats led them to play down the horrors of today’s Ortega regime.   

We have, after all, been down that road before. For decades, some left-wingers sought to minimize the suffering of those in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.  

It would be shameful if, before assessing their reaction to the escalating persecution of Catholics in Nicaragua, Americans were to first ask themselves, in the words of the old protest song, “Which side are you on?” On this occasion there can be no debate about “sides.” The rights of the human person are being viciously attacked, and our solemn duty is to mobilize domestic and world opinion in support of the persecuted in Nicaragua. Even if our government can’t be bothered to.  

Andrea Picciotti-Bayer runs the Conscience Project and is director of strategy for the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America, the only national university of the Catholic Church in America.