Catholic Church and diplomatic sources heard by the Nicaraguan newspaper Confidencial reported that the Bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando Álvarez, who had been released from prison earlier this week, returned to the prison where he was being held this Wednesday morning (5).
According to the sources, Álvarez, who was sentenced in February to more than 26 years in prison by the Sandinista dictatorship for “treason to the homeland”, was once again imprisoned due to the failure of negotiations between the Vatican, the regime of Daniel Ortega and the Episcopal Conference. from Nicaragua.
The Vatican sent a diplomatic representative from its Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Managua to negotiate Álvarez’s release and exile, but there was no agreement.
He refuses to be exiled and demands that all other members of the clergy imprisoned by the Nicaraguan dictatorship also be freed and that the accounts of the Catholic Church in the country be unblocked, conditions that the Sandinista dictatorship did not accept.
“The only circumstance in which Monsignor Álvarez would agree to go into exile is if Pope Francis asked or ordered him, and this has not happened before, nor in the conversations that took place this week with a diplomatic representative of the Vatican,” explained a source to Confidencial.
For his part, the cardinal and archbishop of Managua, Leopoldo Brenes, declared that the news of Álvarez’s release was “pure speculation” and that “he remains in La Modelo prison.”
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