Pope Francis has expressed his grief at the jailing of a Nicaraguan Catholic bishop for 26 years on trumped-up charges of treason.
The Pontiff prayed for Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa during the Sunday Angelus in Rome.
The bishop was summarily imprisoned for 26 years last week after he refused to follow 222 other Nicaraguan priests, seminarians and political activists into exile in the United States.
Pope Francis said: “The news from Nicaragua has grieved me a great deal, and I cannot but remember with concern Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa, whom I love so much.
The Pope said he was also praying “for all those who are suffering in that dear nation”.
“We also ask the Lord, through the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, to open the hearts of political leaders and all citizens to the sincere search for peace, which is born of truth, justice, freedom, and love and is achieved through the patient exercise of dialogue,” the Holy Father said.
The prayers of Pope Francis represent the first public intervention into the mistreatment of Bishop Álvarez since his arrest and detention without trial more than six months ago.
The bishop was offered the chance to take freedom but instead he refused to abandon the suffering Catholic people of his country and would not board the plane to Washington DC when he was driven to the runway from prison.
The hard Left Nicaraguan regime announced the next day that the bishop was a “traitor to the homeland” and that he had been jailed for 26 years and four months.
President Daniel Ortega marked the sentence with a furious speech in which he denounced Bishop Álvarez as a terrorist and a demoniac, and accused him of being arrogant, deranged and unhinged.
Judge Héctor Ernesto Ochoa Andino, president of Criminal Chamber 1 of the Managua Court of Appeals, also said in a statement that Bisohp Álvarez Lagos “is held to be a traitor to the country”.
“Let it be declared that Rolando José Álvarez Lagos is guilty for being the author of the crimes of undermining national security and sovereignty, spreading fake news through information technology, obstructing an official in the performance of his duties, aggravated disobedience or contempt of authority, all committed concurrently and to the detriment of society and the State of the Republic of Nicaragua.”
Bishops around the world immediately united themselves in solidarity with the bishop and the victims of the persecution of the Church in Nicaragua, however.
The Episcopal Council of Latin America, as well as the bishops of Chile and Spain, were among the first to denounce the imprisonment of Bishop Álvarez and the expulsion of political opponents.
In a message released on Saturday, Peruvian Archbishop Miguel Cabrejos of Trujillo, the president of the Latin American Bishops’ Council, spoke against the weakening of the rights of the Catholic faithful and expressed “solidarity, closeness and prayer with and for the people of God and their pastors”.
The bishops of Chile similarly condemned the actions of the Ortega regime as “unjust, arbitrary and disproportionate”.
“We deplore and reject the situation experienced by Bishop Álvarez and the Church in Nicaragua, which violates human rights, the essential dignity of the person and religious freedom,” they said in a statement published by Vatican News.
The Spanish bishops meanwhile asked “all Catholics and all people of good will to pray for the peaceful resolution of this conflict and for an active commitment to peace, which has its indisputable foundation in justice”.
Priests flown to exile into the United States are said to include Father Ramiro Tijerino, the rector of the John Paul II University; Fr José Luis Díaz, vicar of the Cathedral of Matagalpa and Fr Sadiel Eugarrios, his predecessor.
The list also includes three seminarians – Darvin Leiva, Melkin Centeno and Deacon Raúl Vega. At least three Matagalpa diocesan employees, including cameraman Sergio Cárdenas, were also ordered out of the country.
Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami said he was ready to welcome some of the exiles into his diocese, and would offer to house the priests and seminarians at St John Vianney College, a seminary in Miami.
“Most of the people expelled were politicians or candidates for public office that Ortega locked up before the elections,” the archbishop told The Florida Catholic, but among them were “four or five priests, a couple of seminarians, a deacon and an organist.”
“I’m offering them the hospitality of the seminary as well as the opportunity to get acclimated, acculturated and see what the next steps would be after that,” he said.
“I’ve already heard from a few bishops who need Spanish-speaking priests who would be happy to help them out,” he added.
President Ortega has often been antagonistic toward to the Catholic Church. He first came to power as the leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, Marxist guerrillas who emerged victorious from a brief civil war against the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in 1979.
Throughout the 1980s, he attempted to export revolution to neighbouring El Salvador, which prompted Ronald Reagan to sponsor the anti-Sandinista “Contra” guerrillas, and also clashed with the then-pope St John Paul II.
More than any other country in Latin America, Nicaragua was “a laboratory for the various liberation theologies’ claims” and ahead of the then-pope’s visit to Nicaragua in 1983, Ortega personally intimidated the papal nuncio, once driving up to the nunciature in a red sports car followed by jeeps of heavily armed soldiers.
For the papal Mass in Managua, icons of Marx, Lenin and other revolutionary heroes were cleaned up and placed in proximity to the altar, and the closest blocks of seats were packed with Sandinista supporters, who attempted drown out to Pope’s words.
Engineers turned down the Pope’s microphone and turned up microphones placed among the agitators until finally John Paul shouted “silencio!” over the heckling.
John Paul II caused further embarrassment to the President when he ordered Fr Ernesto Cardenal to regularise his position in the Church after his refusal to give up political office at the behest of the bishops, before suspending him the following year.
Pope Francis later absolved all canonical censures imposed upon Fr Cardinal, a liberation theology activist, and readmitted him to the exercise of the priestly ministry.
Relations with Rome deteriorated again with the onset of political instability, however, and since 2018 there have been more than 190 attacks against the Church, its bishops, priests, faithful and houses of worship.
The mounting animosity followed the efforts of the Church to mediate in the national unrest that claimed more than 300 lives and because of its calls for democratic reforms and for human rights to be upheld.
Ortega eventually agreed to elections in 2021, but he and Murillo cleared the field of opposition by arresting seven other presidential candidates along with 140 politicians, intellectuals, businessmen, former diplomats and journalists. They include former Sandinista rebels who had once fought alongside him.
At the same time, cathedrals and churches were besieged and firebombed, and bishops and clergy depicted as enemies of the people siding with “coup plotters”.
Ortega has repeatedly insulted Catholic bishops and priests, calling them “demons in cassocks”, “terrorists” and “coup plotters”, and a year ago he expelled the apostolic nuncio in Nicaragua, Archbishop Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, which caused “surprise and pain” to the Holy See.
Threats against Auxiliary Bishop Silvio Jose Baez of Managua, who had denounced state repression on social media, were so worrying that he was called to Rome and persuaded by Pope Francis to accept exile in the United States.
In July the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by St Teresa of Calcutta, were also expelled from the country.
Catholic television and radio stations have also been closed down as part of a campaign against the media in general.
(Photograph of Bishop Álvarez courtesy of Vatican Media)
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