Nicaraguan police detain bishop who criticized government

Nicaraguan police Friday raided the residence of a Roman Catholic bishop who is an outspoken critic of President Daniel Ortega’s government, apparently detaining the senior clergyman and several other priests who had been holed up inside for two weeks after police set up a cordon.

The raid came after Nicaraguan authorities had accused Matagalpa Bishop Rolando Álvarez of “organizing violent groups” and inciting them “to carry out acts of hate against the population.”

Ortega’s government has moved systematically against voices of dissent. Dozens of political opposition leaders were arrested last year, including seven potential candidates to challenge him for the presidency. They were sentenced to prison this year in quick trials closed to the public.

The congress, dominated by Ortega’s Sandinista National Liberation Front, has ordered the closure of more than 1,000 nongovernmental organizations, including Mother Teresa’s charity.

Early Friday, the Matagalpa diocese posted on social media, “#SOS #Urgente. At this time the National Police have entered the Episcopal rectory of our Matagalpa diocese.”

In a video message, Pablo Cuevas, a lawyer with the nongovernmental Permanent Committee on Human Rights, condemned Álvarez’s detention but said it was not unexpected.

“What was obviously going to happen has happened, the arbitrary and abusive arrest of Msgr. Álvarez,” Cuevas said.

Edwin Román, a Nicaraguan parish priest exiled in the U.S., said on Twitter: “MY GOD! How outrageous, they have taken Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, with the priests who were with him.”

Police said Aug. 5 that the investigation would also target a number of people who won’t be allowed to leave their homes during the inquiry.

Álvarez has been a key religious voice in discussions of Nicaragua’s future since 2018, when protests against Ortega’s govern- ment led to a sweeping crackdown on opponents.

“We hope there would be a series of electoral reforms, structural changes to the electoral authority — free, just and transparent elections, international observation without conditions,” Álvarez said a month after the protests broke out. “Effectively the democratization of the country.”

At the time, a priest in Álvarez’s diocese had been wounded in the arm by shrapnel while trying to separate protesters and police in Matagalpa.

He has kept up such calls for democracy for the last four years, infuriating Ortega and his wife, First Lady and Vice President Rosario Murillo.

Friday’s arrests follow weeks of heightened tensions between the church and the government.

Ortega has had a complicated relationship with Nicaragua’s predominant religion and its leaders for more than four decades. The former Marxist guerrilla angered the Vatican in the 1980s but gradually forged an alliance with the church as he moved to regain the presidency in 2007 after a long period out of power. Now he appears to once again see political benefit in direct confrontation.

Ortega initially invited the church to mediate talks with protesters in 2018 but has since taken a more aggressive position.

Days before last year’s presidential election, which he won for a fourth consecutive term with his strongest opponents jailed, he accused the bishops of having drafted a political proposal in 2018 on behalf “of the terrorists, at the service of the Yankees. ... These bishops are also terrorists.”

In March, Nicaragua expelled the papal nuncio, the Vatican’s top diplomat in Nicaragua.

The government had previously shut down eight radio stations and one television channel in Matagalpa province, north of Managua, the capital. Seven of the radio stations were run by the church.

The Aug. 5 announcement that Álvarez was under investigation came just hours after Murillo criticized “sins against spirituality” and “the exhibition of hate” in an apparent reference to Álvarez.

The Archdiocese of Managua had earlier expressed support for Álvarez. The conference of Latin American bishops decried what it called a “siege” of priests and bishops, the expulsion of members of religious communities and “constant harassment” targeting the Nicaraguan people and the church.

The Vatican remained silent about the investigation of Álvarez for nearly two weeks, drawing criticism from some Latin American human rights activists and intellectuals.

That silence was broken last Friday when Msgr. Juan Antonio Cruz, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the Organization of American States, expressed concern about the situation and asked both parties to “seek ways of understanding.”

The Vatican again offered no comment Friday and didn’t report the news immediately on its in-house media portal. While staying mum, apparently in hopes of not inflaming tensions, the Vatican has been publishing regular expressions of solidarity from Latin American bishops in recent days on its Vatican News site.

The president of Nicaragua's Episcopal Conference did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Huge street protests across Nicaragua in 2018 called for Ortega to step down. Ortega claimed that the protests were a coup attempt carried out with foreign backing and the support of the church.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.