After keeping Nicaraguan priest Rolando Álvarez – a critic of the administration of President Daniel Ortega – surrounded for more than 24 hours, the National Police accused him this Friday of “organizing violent groups” and “inciting them to commit acts of hatred,” for which who announced that an investigation process has been initiated against him and his companions.
Álvarez has been there for two days without being able to leave the curate, in Matagalpa, and has not been able to officiate masses in the Cathedral of the Diocese he directs, after police groups stationed themselves on the outskirts of the place preventing free movement.
On Thursday morning the prelate went out to confront the police carrying the image of the Blessed Sacrament, but a day later Vice President Rosario Murillo accused him, without referring directly to him, of manipulating religious symbols and threatened him saying that “he had no impunity “.
Subsequently, the police accused Álvarez and other religious of being “prevailing of their status as religious leaders” to “organize violent groups, inciting them to carry out acts of hatred against the population, causing an atmosphere of anxiety and disorder, disturbing the peace. .. with the purpose of destabilizing the State of Nicaragua.”
At the moment neither the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua nor the Vatican have ruled on the matter. The Diocese of Managua issued a statement Friday night where he expressed “his closeness” to Álvarez and his priests “in the face of the difficult circumstances they are experiencing.”
The accusation comes amid the arrests of two priests critical of Ortega and the exile of important ecclesiastical figures such as Monsignor Silvio Báez and the priest Edwin Román.
Ortega has recently closed down a series of radio stations and channels of the Catholic Church.
Ortega has waged a contest against the Church and its priests since 2018, after the demonstrations where more than 300 people died.
The protesters used the temples to safeguard their lives, for which the president called the religious “devils in cassocks”, despite the fact that he apologized to them during his 2006 presidential campaign for the “offenses committed” against the Church in the 80’s.
Nicaraguan priest: “Religious freedom no longer exists”
According to religious consulted by the voice of america, With this measure against the Church, Ortega believes that he is “burning his last cartridge.”
Nicaraguan priest exiled in Miami Edwin Román told VOA that the attacks against the Church show that in Nicaragua “there is no religious freedom, freedom of expression or mobilization.”
“You live repressed. Not even those close to the dictatorship can easily get to the airport and take a plane,” the priest said by telephone.
The priests and some bishops in Nicaragua “have been singled out by the dictatorship for being consistent with the Gospel and raising their voices in defense of human rights,” he said.
“The prophets are always going to make people uncomfortable, because their conscience accuses the persecutors,” said Román.
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