ABP Cordileone & More on Martyrs of Communism at the Hudson Institute

This year, international headlines reported the shocking news that Nicaragua’s human rights hero Bishop Rolando José Álvarez was exiled after he and hundreds of Nicaraguan priests had been thrown in Pr*son without basic due process, for spurious political reasons. These reports are alarming but missing from the coverage is that this follows the common pattern of repression today in China, Cuba, Venezuela and other communist and Marxist governments.

We know people of faith have much to fear from Communism. But at the invitation of the Hudson Institute, Archbishop Cordileone will be speaking on perhaps the most important question: Why do Marxist and neo-Marxist regimes fear religion so much?

The event takes place at the Hudson Institute November 15 at 2 PM Eastern. The livestream will be 2 pm EASTERN/11 a.m. Pacific.

Joining Archbishop Cordileone, renowned human rights advocate Nina Shea will speak of her latest report on the Catholic bishops persecuted by mainland China today. The great George Weigel will speak of the path forward to liberating millions of souls. Helen Aguirre Ferre will give an update on religious persecution in the Americas today, especially Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela, and witness Marco Novoa will share what the Nicaraguan government did to him just recently.

Did you think Communist oppression was ancient history? Listen to the voices of the martyrs and think again.

Register at the Hudson Institute to attend in Washington D.C. or register here to get information on the livestream.

Salvatore J. Cordileone is the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco and the author of "Modern Martyrs of Communism". He has launched a multiyear project to remember the martyrs of Communism in hymns and other works of art.

Nina Shea is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Hudson Institute. Ms. Shea has been a human rights lawyer for over 30 years.

Ms. Shea was appointed by the US House of Representatives to serve as a commissioner on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom seven times from 1999 to 2012. During the Soviet era, Ms. Shea’s first client before the United Nations was Soviet Nobel Peace Laureate Andrei Sakharov. Since then, she has been appointed as a US delegate to the United Nation's main human rights body by both Republican and Democratic administrations. She also served as a member of the Clinton administration's Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad. In 2009, she was appointed to serve as a member of the US National Commission to UNESCO.

She is the co-author of Silenced: How Apostasy & Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide, with a foreword by Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid, the former President of Indonesia and head of Nahdlatul Ulama, the world's largest Muslim organization (Oxford University Press, 2011). Her most recent book, which she also co-authored, is Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2013). She regularly presents testimony before Congress, delivers public lectures, organizes briefings and conferences, and writes frequently on religious freedom issues in leading publications.

George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Catholic theologian and one of America’s leading public intellectuals. He holds EPPC’s William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. From 1989 through June 1996, Mr. Weigel was president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is perhaps best known for his internationally acclaimed two-volume biography of Pope St. John Paul II: Witness to Hope (1999), and its sequel, The End and the Beginning (2010).

George Weigel is the author or editor of more than thirty other books, many of which have been translated into other languages. Among the most recent are Letters to a Young Catholic (2015); The Fragility of Order: Catholic Reflections on Turbulent Times (2018); The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (2020); and Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse Cast of Characters, Most of Them Admirable (2021). His essays, op-ed columns, and reviews appear regularly in major opinion journals and newspapers across the United States. A frequent guest on television and radio, he is also Senior Vatican Analyst for NBC News. His weekly column, “The Catholic Difference,” is syndicated to eighty-five newspapers and magazines in seven countries.

Marco Novoa is a U.S. Citizen from a family of Nicaraguans who as a student volunteered with his church to supply local protestors. He was kidnapped, held for eight days and tortured by a paramilitary group aligned with the Ortega government.

Helen Aguirre Ferré is a Nicaraguan American journalist and the former executive director for the Republican Party of Florida. She previously served as Communications Director for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Aguirre Ferré was the Director for Strategic Communications and Public Affairs at the National Endowment for the Arts from August to December 2018 and the White House's Director of Media Affairs from January 2017 to August 2018. Prior to that, she hosted the public affairs program Issues on WPBT 2.

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