16 organizations opposed to the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo demanded the immediate release of Monsignor Rolando Álvarez and the eight priests, seminarians and laity kidnapped since August 19, after the police assault on the Episcopal Curia of Matagalpa.
Monsignor Rolando Álvarez has been under “house arrest” for 20 days. Until now, the Police have not provided updated information on his situation. According to sources on condition of anonymity, the prelate was beaten at the time of his arrest.
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Opposition groups point out that Ortega has been vicious against the Catholic Church, arbitrarily detaining priests, who have been “falsely accused by the Police of the Ortega and Murillo dictatorship of committing common crimes.”
They also demanded that the Ortega dictatorship show the religious “political prisoners of this illegitimate regime.” They pointed out that they are all innocent “of the crimes that have been fabricated against them.”
“The people of Nicaragua know that the dictatorship does not respect the rule of law in the country, but they have faith in the priests who have accompanied them throughout history in the construction of the nation,” they stated.
They show solidarity with Monsignor Jorge Solorzano
On the other hand, the opponents rejected the statements of the Ministry of the Family (MIFAN), an institution submissive to the orders of Ortega that declared Monsignor in “rebellion” Jorge Solorzano, bishop of the Diocese of Granada, “who expressed to the people of Nicaragua his profound pain and suffering upon learning of the sentence against Monsignor José Leonardo Urbina -parish priest of the Church of Perpetual Help, in Boaco- and asked the faithful to continue praying for the priests incarcerated.”
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“It is unacceptable that an institution complicit in the violation of human rights pronounces itself in this way against Bishop Solórzano and the Diocese of Granada, when it is known that the illegitimate regime of Ortega and Murillo has been carrying out, for weeks, an escalation repressive against the Catholic Church”, they reproached.
Once again they called on the international community to “use all its diplomatic means to achieve an end to the repression in Nicaragua, the unconditional release of all political prisoners and respect for constitutional freedoms, including religious freedom.”
Since 2018 the Ortega dictatorship has maintained a wave of repression against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, however, this year the onslaught has been greater, since it has locked up nine priests and sentenced two of them — Monsignor Leonard Urbina And the father Manuel Garcia Rodriguez— for alleged common crimes.
