The Bishop of Danlí (Honduras), Bishop José Antonio Canales, shared that the Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Álvarez Lagos, exiled in Rome, is “full of hope and optimism.
“I am here (Rome) to participate in a world meeting on youth ministry and I contacted him and other Nicaraguan priests to talk and encourage them,” Mons. Canales told the newspaper. The Press.
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Bishop Rolando Álvarez, the prelate highlighted, “is very animated, full of hope and optimism.”
The Honduran bishop also explained that Bishop Álvarez “is going through a period of personal silence. Nobody has imposed it on him, it is his personal decision to have time for himself, to reflect on his life, but everything is fine.”
“He is thin, but healthy. It has good color. “He told me that he was trying to maintain a healthy weight,” she added.
The Honduran bishop also indicated that the Vatican has not made any decision regarding any pastoral mission for Bishop Álvarez.
“The Holy See wants to take things calmly, seeing what signs appear on the horizon of the situation in Nicaragua. There is no decision on the part of the Pope,” she said.
“But I can assure you that (Mons. Rolando Álvarez) is still the Bishop of Matagalpa and Apostolic Administrator of Estelí. He still has those titles,” he remarked.
The bishop finally commented that he could return to Honduras with one of the priests exiled in Rome.
Who is Bishop Rolando Álvarez?
Bishop Rolando Álvarez, Bishop of Matagalpa and Apostolic Administrator of Estelí, is a well-known defender of human rights and critic of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, and his wife and vice president Rosario Murillo.
The Nicaraguan prelate was forced to remain confined inside his episcopal house since the beginning of August 2022, along with some priests, seminarians and a layman.
Two weeks later, when they were almost out of food supplies, the police broke into the house and kidnapped Mons. Álvarez to Managua, the country’s capital, where he was under house arrest.
In the midst of a questioned process, the dictatorship sentenced him on February 10, 2023 to 26 years and four months in prison, accusing him of “traitor to the country.” Since then, he was held in the prison known as The modelwhere the political prisoners of the dictatorship are sent.
One day before being sentenced, Bishop Álvarez had refused to get on a plane in which Ortega and Murillo deported more than 200 political prisoners to the United States.
He was finally deported to Rome, after mediation by the Vatican, on January 14, 2024, together with the Bishop of Siuna, Mons. Isidoro Mora; other priests and seminarians.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.