Bishop Rolando Lvarez, a major critic of President Daniel Ortega’s regime, was taken away by Nicaraguan police on Friday morning after they stormed into his residence while he was under house arrest.
Several priests, seminarians, and laypeople were carried to the chancery under duress on August 4; lvarez, the bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, hasn’t had access to food or medication since.
In the wee hours of this morning, the Diocese of Matagalpa posted on social media that the National Police had just invaded the chancery of our Diocese of Matagalpa.
According to ACI Prensa, CNA’s sister Spanish-language news agency, the bishop was taken prisoner by the Nicaraguan police and put in a vehicle.
The police also searched the prelate’s parents’ house, according to Yoselin Alvarez, the bishop of Matagalpa’s niece, who reported this this morning.
The eight extra people who had been in the chancery since August 4 with Bishop Lvarez were transported in several cars.
Auxiliary Bishop José Báez of Nicaragua, who has been living in exile since 2020 because of safety fears, tweeted:
“I am outraged and grieved by the Bishop’s nightly abduction. Those who know, tell us where my brother the bishop is! May his kidnappers respect his dignity and release him! Once again, the dictatorship wins the battle with its own dark, evil nature.
firmly condemned the Monsignor Alvarez’s overnight search.
If you understand what I’m saying, kindly let me know where my obispo brother is. ¡ I hope his attackers will respect his dignity and release him! The dictadura defeats its own evil and demonic spirit again again.
on August 19, 2022, Silvio José Báez (@silviojbaez)
To protect their priests and prevent them from being taken as well, the faithful gathered early in the morning at the Santa Luca parish in the diocese, where they have been seeing the Ortega regime’s police presence outside their church for many days.
Tweeted by Santa Lucia Diocese Media-Radio
#SOS #IMPORTANT When we discovered, to our dismay, that the police had broken into the Chancery of the Diocese of Matagalpa, the people of the Santa Luca parish in the town of Daro gathered to secure the safety of our priest this morning, Friday, to the ringing of the church bells. Please pray for our Bishop Rolando Alvarez Lagos.
Asserting that “the strength and power of the Christian is in prayer,” the Diocese of Matagalpa posted the following prayer on Twitter, asking for prayers for lvarez and the other individuals taken hostage by the Ortega government:
Give our bishop the capacity to pray without stopping, the pleasure of friendship with his priests and religious, and the pleasure of serving his people with a giving attitude, O Lord Jesus, good shepherd.
“Merciful Lord, give him the chance to proclaim the one and only true God and experience him through the goodwill of everyone, particularly the sickest, poorest, and penitents,” the hymn goes.
May he be committed to the mission of promoting hope and relentlessly seeking justice, and may his heart be sensitive to the suffering and aspirations of his flock.
We commit him to the intercession of Your Divine Mercy, Our Lady of Mercy, Sister Faustina Kowalska, and Pope Saint John Paul II. Amen.
We have been praying in the following way with Bishop Rolando José Alvarez Lagos ever since he arrived in the Diocese of Matagalpa on April 2, 2011: “With this prayer, we continue to pray to the Lord for our Pastor, for the priests, seminarians and laity who have followed him.”
Since 2018, the Ortega dictatorship has allowed more than 190 attacks on Catholic Church members, including bishops, priests, followers, and places of worship.
Catholic priests and bishops have often been referred to by Ortega as “demons in cassocks,” “terrorists,” and “coup plotters.”
The regime banished Archbishop Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, the apostolic nuncio in Nicaragua, in March of this year. The decision was met with “surprise and anguish” at the Vatican.
Beginning in July, the Missionaries of Charity, a group dedicated to assisting the most disadvantaged citizens and founded by Saint Teresa of Calcutta, were expelled from the country.
The nation’s government also compelled all Catholic radio and television stations to shut down.
Recently, the Ortega government in Nicaragua has been intimidating priests by using the police, especially in the dioceses of Matagalpa and Siuna, where Father Oscar Benavidez was imprisoned for an unspecified reason.