Long live Monsignor Rolando José Álvarez, bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, mixed with the traditional cry of Who causes so much joy?, in the celebration of the popular Gritería, this December 7, in the so-called Pearl of the North.
The Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Estelí has also been at home in prison since last August 4 and for the first time in the 98 years of the Diocese of Matagalpa, the Gritería was left without the cry of a bishop.
In the San Pedro Apóstol de Matagalpa cathedral, the vicar Jader Guido was in charge of the cry and also distributed packages to the parishioners who filled the Catholic temple even in the midst of a slight blackout.
“Long live Monsignor Rolando, long live our bishop”, shouted the parishioners in the cathedral.
After being forced into confinement along with several priests, seminarians and laymen for 15 days in the Episcopal residence of Matagalpa, Monsignor Álvarez has been locked up in his house in Managua since August 19, without the company of relatives, but in police custody.
Meanwhile, thousands of Matagalpinos toured the altars in different neighborhoods of the city, singing to the Virgin and shouting at the top of their lungs the characteristic slogans of the Marian festivity: “María de Nicaragua, Nicaragua de María… Who causes so much joy? The Conception of Mary”, among others.
pilgrimage in the north
Hundreds of Catholic parishioners, coming from different areas of the northern Segovian region (Nueva Segovia, Madriz and Estelí), celebrated with songs of the Immaculate Conception, the appearance of the Virgin of Cacaulí, in the Somoteño community of the same name located just five kilometers northwest of the city of Somoto, head of the department of Madriz.
Since 1990, faithful Catholics from different areas of the northern region of the country, and even parishioners from the border areas of Honduras, have met on the eighth of each month in the sanctuary of the Cacaulí community, in Somoto, to listen to mass. that priests officiate and to ask the virgin for the healing of diseases that afflict them or a family member. They also listen to the testimony given at the end by Francisco José Tercero, who assures that the Virgin appeared to him while he was looking for firewood.
Francisco José Tercero, now 32 years old, was only 13 years old when on the afternoon of December 8, 1990, while he was looking for firewood on his grandfather’s farm located in the Somoteño community of Cacaulí, when the Virgin appeared to him who He gave him messages that reveal to Catholics that they meet on the eighth of each month in the sanctuary that was built in honor of the Virgin that bears the name of the same place where she appeared.
“I come with my whole family on the eighth of each month to the sanctuary of the Virgin of Cacaulí, because the Virgin has healed me of rheumatism diseases in both legs that previously made it difficult for me to walk and work and also to ask for the health of my husband and children,” testified to Mrs. Francisca Pérez Hernández, 59, who traveled the day before from the Honduran municipality of San Marcos de Colón, and who woke up in the place with her two children and her husband Héctor José Machado. Sources.
Urania Ramírez, from the El Chagüite indigenous community in the municipality of San Lucas, in Madriz, said that she came to the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Cacaulí to ask her to give good health to all the members of her family next year, peace to the Nicaraguans in the country and to help them in the coming plantings.
For their part, Marvin Ayesca and Lucia Sánchez, both also from the El Mogote indigenous community, in San Lucas, said they came to thank the Virgin for having cured their eldest daughter who suffered from conditions that the doctors could not manage to see. cure her.
“The whole family came for the third time, more so because we have to fulfill a promise to the little virgin that we made to her if she healed our daughter who suffered from a serious eye infection that the doctors had already said had no cure, but the little virgin of Cacaulí did, “said Ayescas.
While Justina del Carmen Sánchez Cruz, inhabitant of the community of the pastoral zone of life “Hermanos Martínez” of the municipality of Somoto, head of Madriz, stated that she has enormous unwavering faith in the Virgin of Cacaulí for having saved the life of his son who was on the verge of death after having suffered a serious motorcycle accident. “The little virgin prolonged the life of my son, thanks to her he is saved,” she said.
“May the little virgin help us to have peace in Nicaragua. May he give us a good winter next year like the one we had this year to obtain good crops from the corn and bean crops to continue working. May he also give good health and long life to my family and to all Nicaraguan families,” said Don Genaro Cruz Talavera, a farmer from the La Esperanza community in the Yalagüina municipality, in Madriz.
