Rolando José Álvarez Lagos, 55, was already a symbol of the resistance of the Catholic Church and Nicaraguan society against the Sandinista dictatorship.
This Friday (19), this symbolism gained even more strength: after many hostilities by the regime of dictator Daniel Ortega, Álvarez and seven other people were arrested by the Nicaraguan authorities at the episcopal headquarters of Matagalpa, in the center-west of the country.
Ortega believes that bishops and priests supported demonstrations that called for his departure in 2018, protests that were repressed with extreme violence, resulting in more than 300 deaths.
This year, the pace of persecution against the Church increased: before Álvarez was arrested, the Sandinista regime had expelled the apostolic nuncio Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag from the country, arrested three priests, closed eight Catholic radio stations, removed three Catholic channels from the pay-TV and invaded a parish, from which 16 missionary nuns of the Mother Teresa of Calcutta order were expelled.
Álvarez’s older sister, Vilma, told Magazine Magazine, from the newspaper La Prensa, that her brother, born in the capital Managua, showed a vocation for the priesthood from an early age: as a child, he would gather his family at home to celebrate Mass and call Father Miguel himself.
Also according to Vilma’s account, Álvarez refused to carry out his mandatory military service under the Sandinista dictatorship in the 1980s. He was arrested “two or three times” and the family’s house was searched. To escape persecution, he lived for a while as a refugee in Guatemala.
Álvarez had a girlfriend and even considered marriage, but the Church’s call was stronger: in December 1994, at age 28, he was ordained a priest in the Cathedral of Managua. In 2011, he took over the Diocese of Matagalpa.
The bishop came into the sights of the Sandinista dictatorship in 2018, when the Church tried to intermediate dialogue between Ortega and oppositionists. At the time, Álvarez stated that there was “no other path” other than “the democratization of the Republic of Nicaragua”.
His position as a social leader against repression has gained strength this year: in May, Álvarez denounced the persecution against the Church and announced that he would fast indefinitely in protest.
At the beginning of August, when the bishop denounced that he had been held in his curia by police forces without knowing the reason, together with six priests and six lay people, an emblematic scene: after police prevented parishioners and Álvarez’s assistants from entering the diocese to receive the Eucharist, the monsignor knelt on the sidewalk and raised his hands to the sky, an image that went viral on social media.
When the head of the Matagalpa departmental police, Sergio Gutiérrez, asked the bishop to cooperate, Álvarez replied: “You are the one who doesn’t cooperate.”
“The police say we are the ones causing the riot. But they were the ones who surrounded the curia street, they are the ones who are at the door of my house and do not let people in,” she declared.
This Friday, the de facto arrest and transfer to Managua took place, on the charge that Álvarez had tried to “organize violent groups”, allegedly “with the aim of destabilizing the Nicaraguan State and attacking the constitutional authorities”, without any proof was presented.
When he was held in the curia, the bishop had already expressed that his protest did not admit of hatred against the oppressors: he prayed “also for those who keep us imprisoned, we continue to ask the Lord to bless their lives, their marriages, their families, their jobs. , may the Lord bless your food, your steps”.
However, he also asked the Catholic faithful to “keep alive hope, remain strong in love and live in the freedom of the children of God, knowing that the Lord will fulfill his word: the Lord will restore Nicaragua”.
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