The former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS) Arturo McFields criticized the Catholic Church of Nicaragua due to the silence it maintained in his recent and extensive statement where he avoided referring to the situation faced by imprisoned religious and priests.
McFields called Bishop Rolando Álvarez and a dozen religious in Nicaragua the “sad and shameful silence of the Episcopal Conference after serving more than 100 days in jail and torture. The Ortega Murillo dictatorship totals 396 hate criminal attacks against the church,” the former diplomat stated in a tweet addressed to Pope Francis.
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The Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua (CEN), which mediated between the Ortega Executive and the opposition to try to overcome the crisis that broke out in April 2018, did not refer in its message to the more than 10 priests who remain in prison and also excluded the house arrest of the bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Estelí, both in northern Nicaragua, Rolando Álvarez, accused of being a rebel.
Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, a member of the Episcopate, as well as the auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Managua and exiled in the United States, Silvio Báez, were the absent priests in the document. The Catholic Church of Nicaragua has avoided referring to his situation and denouncing his arrest.
Last month, President Ortega lashed out at the Catholic Church led by Pope Francis, accusing it of not practicing democracy, of being a “dictatorship” and a “perfect tyranny” and of having used “its bishops in Nicaragua to give a coup d’etat” against his government in the context of the demonstrations that broke out in April 2018 over controversial social security reforms.
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The arrest of Bishop Álvarez and the other eight priests is the most recent chapter of a particularly turbulent year for the Catholic Church in Nicaragua with the Ortega government, who has branded the hierarchs as “coup plotters” and “terrorists.”
Relations between the Daniel Ortega regime and the Nicaraguan Catholic Church have been marked by friction and mistrust in the last 43 years.
