Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Álvarez, besieged for 8 days by the National Police who accuses him of trying to “organize violent groups,” said Thursday that his life, as well as that of 5 priests, 3 seminarians, and 2 lay people who are being held in an Episcopal Palace, “are in the hands of God.”
“Our 11 lives are in the hands of the Lord,” said the bishop when offering a telematic mass from the Episcopal Palace in the department of Matagalpa (north), where he has been confined since last Thursday.
“We are in the hands of God. We want to do only his will and we want to give him glory,” continued Álvarez, 55, bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Estelí, both in northern Nicaragua.
The religious, who specified that they are “retained” in the Las Mercedes Chapel of the Episcopal Curia of Matagalpa, where Jesús Sacramentado is, assured that they are, “thank God, in good health, living in community, with family, praying, celebrating the Eucharist, sharing with each other, dialoguing, conversing, with inner strength, with peace and serenity in the heart”.
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Also “with a joy in conscience that can only come from God,” he said.
“It is a supernatural peace, strength, serenity and joy. We are experiencing a retreat in the presence of the Lord,” he noted.
ACCUSED OF ATTEMPTING TO “ORGANIZE VIOLENT GROUPS”
The bishop was accused last Friday by the National Police of trying to “organize violent groups”, supposedly “with the purpose of destabilizing the State of Nicaragua and attacking the constitutional authorities”, and for eight days he has been held together with five priests. and five lay people in the Episcopal Palace, which is besieged by special police forces.
The religious maintained that only before the Lord do their knees prostrate, their faces bow, “and our lips proclaim his lordship.”
Likewise, he said that they are “totally convinced that everything happens for our good, because God loves us and we love him”, and offered the Lord “this experience that we are living”.
“Painful experiences do not fall in vain, they do not fall into a void, they are offered to the Lord and the Lord returns them in blessings for us,” he said.
The hierarch also urged to overcome hatred, despair, and “not to hold rancor or resentment in the heart, not to wish harm on anyone, not to pay evil for evil, but to overcome evil with the strength and power of good”.
“Never, God forbid, that in our hearts reach the slightest intention of wishing harm to a person,” he said.
He explained that “when you wish someone ill in your heart, it means that the devil has managed to penetrate your heart and has managed to infect your heart and that should not be allowed”, because “hatred destroys a person”.
In his opinion, “evil is defeated by the force of good”, because “good is eternally powerful” and “evil is tremendously limited”.
“What happens, of course, is that evil is noisy, it makes a lot of noise (…) and within its demonic nature it tries to confuse by making us think that it is the one that wins and that it is greater than good, but that is a temptation of Satan to despair the man and woman of good will, of good intention”, he noted.
BISHOP: “OUR HEARTS ARE FULL OF LOVE AND FORGIVENESS”
Bishop Álvarez also said that he spoke with the other 10 people with whom he is confined about his emotional state.
“We want to tell you that our hearts are full of love, of forgiveness, of the mercy of the Lord, that is why we are at peace. We are resting in the hands of the Lord, who is in the best hands we can be in,” he remarked.
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Relations between the Sandinistas and the Nicaraguan Catholic Church have been marked by friction and mistrust in the last 43 years.
President Daniel Ortega branded as “terrorists” the Nicaraguan bishops who acted as mediators of a national dialogue that sought a peaceful solution to the political and social crisis that the country has been experiencing since April 2018.
The situation in Nicaragua has worsened after the controversial elections last November in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term, fourth consecutive and second along with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice president, with his main contenders in prison.
