Managua (Nicaragua): After the government of Daniel Ortega formally banned the work of the Missionaries of Charity in Nicaragua, 18 nuns were forced out of the country by police on July 6. It is the latest in a series of attacks on the Catholic Church and its ministries from the Central American country's increasingly repressive government.

According to the newspaper El Confidencial, the nuns were taken by the General Directorate of Migration and Immigration and the police from the cities of Managua and Granada, where they had been serving the poor, to the border country of Costa Rica.

Of the 18 sisters, there are seven Indians, two Mexicans, two Filipinos, two Guatemalans, two Nicaraguans, one Spaniard, one Ecuadorian, and one Vietnamese.

The dissolution of the Missionaries of Charity and another 100 NGOs in Nicaragua was approved on June 29 by the National Assembly on an “urgent” basis and without any debate.

The National Assembly, Nicaragua’s legislative body, is controlled by the Sandinista National Liberation Front, led by Ortega.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his allies have increasingly persecuted the Catholic Church and civil society. The president, who won re-election last year in polls considered rigged by opponents and outside observers, is concentrating power; he continues to hold political prisoners and has closed outlets for political expression.

The sisters were welcomed to the Diocese of Tilarán-Liberia in neighboring Costa Rica by Bishop Manuel Eugenio Salazar Mora.

“It’s an honor for our Diocese of Tilarán-Liberia that the soles of your feet should tread on these lands,” the prelate wrote about the sisters on Facebook.

“We pray for the Church in Nicaragua, for its bishops and priests. Sisters, welcome to these lands; our diocese has open doors to receive you. Thank you for your example, dedication, and service to the poorest of the poor,” he said.

“May St. Teresa of Calcutta continue to intercede for your intentions. Long live Christ the King!” he concluded.

Attorney Martha Patricia Molina Montenegro, a member of the Pro Transparency and Anticorruption Observatory, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language sister news agency, that “the dictatorship” of Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, “is characterized by granting citizenship to foreigners accused in their own countries of being criminals and expelling honorable people who are also Nicaraguan nationals.”

The lawyer charged that “the dictatorship has a frontal war against the Catholic Church of Nicaragua and its objective is to completely eliminate all those institutions related to the Church.”

Molina told that the elderly whom the sisters cared for “have also been expelled from the nursing home” but that the sisters “have made sure that they remain in good hands and not as the dictatorship wanted, which is that they go back to being homeless on the street.”