The bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, Monsignor Rolando José Álvarez, denounced on social networks that this Sunday he was persecuted and intercepted, in a “brusque and arbitrary manner” by four agents of the National Police, from the San Benito delegation, municipality to the north of Managua.
On the Facebook profile of the Diocese of Matagalpa, the bishop published that “at approximately 1:10 pm today, Sunday, I was followed and intercepted in a brusque, arbitrary and arrogant manner by four agents of patrol 1169 from post Police of San Benito, who after stopping the vehicle, surrounded it, asking for the stationery and taking the usual photos.
“I denounce this fact before the Nicaraguan people, as I will do any other type of action that violates my free right to mobilize,” added the bishop, one of the most critical voices of the Catholic Church against the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
attacks on the church
Ortega has He described the bishops as “coup plotters” and accused them of “being accomplices” of internal forces and international groups to overthrow him. During the last electoral campaign, the Sandinista caudillo also referred to the Catholic leaders as “terrorists.”
On March 6, the regime expelled the apostolic nuncio Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, representative of the Holy See in Nicaragua. The government of Ortega and Murillo gave the religious a little more than a week to leave the country, but after consultations with the Vatican, the monsignor abandoned his diplomatic mission in Nicaragua, without saying goodbye to the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua (CEN) or the diplomatic corps accredited in the country.
In a statement, the Vatican assured that it received “with surprise and pain the communication that the Government of Nicaragua has decided to withdraw the approval (agrement)” to the apostolic nuncio.
Relations between the Ortega supporters and the Nicaraguan Catholic Church have been marked by friction and mistrust in the last 43 years.
