Rolando Álvarez, the bishop besieged by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, in Nicaragua. Photo: archive
In Nicaragua they lead a bishop and a group of priests and parishioners a week besieged by the police in the curia of Matagalpa, in the north of the country.
The authorities accuse Bishop Rolando Álvarez of destabilizing the state and organizing violent groups. Human rights associations have sent letters to the Vatican asking it to intervene in what they claim to be an attack on religious freedoms.
“We are in good health,” Bishop Rolando Álvarez said Thursday during a mass broadcast on Facebook. He and at least 12 other people, including five priests, have been detained by the police in their curia for more than a week, for denouncing the closure of religious radios.
“We are in good health,” Bishop Rolando Álvarez said during a mass broadcast on Facebook. Photo: Oswaldo Rivas / AFP
Like several humanitarian organizations, the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights They are aware of what could happen to them.
“These are situations of siege, retaliation, harassment, kidnapping of people and the group they accompany priests and laity as human rights organizations, ”explains Álvaro Leyva, general secretary of the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights.
“On July 25 we sent a letter to His Holiness Pope Francis with a report describing a whole series of events in which the regime is exposed for that violation of the human right to religious freedom for his intervention and his pronouncement on this chaos, persecutions, sieges, reprisals, kidnappings that he is carrying out against the Nicaraguan Catholic Church ”, he told RFI.
National Police officers guard the Cristo de Esquipulas parish. Photo: EFE
A relationship broken off in 2018
Leyva explains that the relationship between the Ortega government and the Catholic Church broke down in 2018, when the latter tried to mediate in the social and political crisis and protected the injured protesters, although there were already previous tensions.
Leyva points out that the representatives of the Church “have never been in harmony or in harmony with what the Ortega-Murillo regime has promoted; there has always been a distance because certainly the regime it is not consistent between what he says and what he practices“.
“The pastors of the Catholic Church have simply emphasized that the lack of coherence, respect in terms of human rights, respect for Nicaraguan constitutional rights and, certainly, the distance that the Church has taken from the regime is the result they are facing today. its pastors, its bishops of the Catholic Church ”, he underlines.
AME1062. MANAGUA (NICARAGUA), 20/05 / 2022.- Nicaraguan bishop Rolando Álvarez, critic of the government of President Daniel Ortega, begins an indefinite fast this Friday after being the object, as he reported, of a “police persecution” on the day formerly, which included violating his “circle of family privacy (…) putting the safety” of his family at risk, in Managua (Nicaragua). Álvarez, bishop of the diocese of Matagalpa, apostolic administrator of the diocese of Estelí (north), and head of the Communication area of the Bishops’ Conference of Nicaragua, is one of the most popular and influential religious in Nicaragua. EFE / Jorge Torres
forbidden procession
The war that the dictatorship entertains with the Nicaraguan Church resulted this Friday in the prohibition of a religious procession.
The Archdiocese of Managua reported that the Nicaraguan police I do not authorize a procession with the image of the pilgrim of the virgin of Fatima, scheduled for this Saturday.
“The Archdiocese of Managua, witnessing tolerance and a spirit of peace, in the circumstances that our country is currently experiencing, informs our Catholic priests and faithful that the National Police has informed us that for internal security reasons the procession scheduled for 07:00 on August 13 is not allowed “, the diocese led by the Nicaraguan Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes explained in a note.
This activity was planned on the occasion of the National Marian Congress, which began last Sunday, “and at the end of the pilgrimage of the image of Our Lady of Fatima in the national territory, where it remained for 30 months”, he said.
all to the cathedral
The Archdiocese of Managua has invited all the Catholic faithful to offer this Friday a day of fasting and prayer “for the conversion of all” and participate on Saturday “directly at the Cathedral of Managua, arriving on foot or by their own private means, doing so peacefully to pray for the Church and Nicaragua ”.
“We will meet at eight in the morning for the processional entrance into the atrium of the Cathedral of the Image of Our Lady of Fatima, we will recite the Holy Rosary and then we will participate in the mass, which will be presided over by the archbishop, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes and all the archdiocesan clergy “, he continued.
The procession announced for Saturday with the image of the Virgin of Fatima would start from the school of Cristo Rey for the atrium of the Cathedral of Managua, on a path of about two kilometers.
A replica of the image of the Virgin of Fatima, brought from her Sanctuary in Portugal, arrived in Nicaragua in January 2020 as part of an intense day of prayer for peace and unity in this Central American country.
The Portuguese replica of the Virgin of Fatima, who allegedly made a pilgrimage through Nicaragua for 18 months to commemorate the Marian Jubilee Year, from 25 January to 25 July 2021, remained in the country for 30 months.
It is the third time that a Portuguese image of the Virgin of Fatima has visited Nicaragua in 74 years and the second on a direct journey from its place of origin in Portugal.
Source: EFE and RFI
Source: Clarin
