The Government of Nicaragua lashed out at the Vatican after the interview that the exiled bishop Mons. Rolando Álvarez granted last week to Ewtn News in Rome.
“We pronounce on statements that in the name of the Vatican State, are carried out from pages and platforms that are their own, statements that constitute a grievance and an insult to the sovereignty and dignity of the Nicaraguan State,” said the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry of Foreign Affairs In a letter Published in Spanish and English on Saturday, February 8.
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“The aforementioned statements are irresponsible and disrespectful and violate the maximum laws and norms that govern the independent life of our blessed Nicaragua. In addition, without any supranational political authority, the Vatican State intends to dispose of positions and powers they grant, in Nicaragua, people who ceased to be Nicaraguans, through improper and intolerable behaviors, ”added the letter of the Nicaraguan government.
Although the text does not require what statements it refers to, the reaction of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo occurs shortly after Ewtn’s interview to Mons. Álvarez, Bishop of Matagalpa and Apostolic Administrator of Estelí, and which was published on Thursday 6 February in ACI Press.
In the interview, Mons. Alvarez, who spoke in a personal capacity and not as a representative of the Vatican, said that when he arrived in Rome he intended to present his resignation to Pope Francis. “But I met the goodness of God and the Holy Father who want him to remain the ordinary of Matagalpa and the Apostolic Administrator of Estelí, even being in the diaspora,” the prelate told Ewtn.
“I love my people a lot, I love my people and tell them that I am a bishop for the universal church. That is, I was ordered Bishop for Matagalpa. I am a visible head of Matagalpa and Apostolic Administrator of Estelí and I will continue to be until God wants, ”he added in the interview.
Mons. Álvarez was sentenced to 26 years and four months in jail on February 10, 2023 accused of “betrayal of the country” for denouncing the excesses of the dictatorship and was stripped of Nicaraguan nationality, as has happened with numerous political prisoners, including other members of the Catholic Church. In January 2024 Deported arrived in the Vatican.
Neither ACI Press nor EWTN, its parent company, are pages or platforms of the Vatican but independent and lay media that report on the Catholic Church.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.