Nicaraguan Bishop Freed from Sandinista Chains
Monseigneur Rolando Alvarez has agreed to be liberated from the cold clutches of a Sandinista dungeon following imprisonment that lasted over 500 days. He was released alongside 18 other priests. His release resulted from an “agreement” between the Vatican and the Sandinista rulers of Nicaragua. Even though the details of the deal are not public, we can surmise from some of its results a few elements of its content and intention.
The liberation of the bishop and priests is evidence that the Vatican may be committed to acting for a peaceful negotiation beyond the litany of platitudes in the last 6 years. Their aim - is to prevent a burn-all-bridges strategy in Managua, and that seems wise.
Monseigneur Alvarez was the courageous bishop of Matagalpa, my home town. Alvarez is one of 130 religious figures detained by the Sandinista regime since 2018. Condemned by a Kangaroo court to 26 years in prison on trumped-up charges of treason and sedition, he refused to join the 200+ political prisoners the Sandinistas liberated in a deal made with Washington nearly a year ago last February.
At the time, the Matagalpa Bishop refused to be included among those released for three basic reasons. Accepting the release meant accepting the false charges and sentence that he was a traitor. It meant validating a pack of Sandinista lies. It also meant consenting to be stripped of his nationality, an egregious act for a patriot like Alvarez. The bishop also refused to trade the indignity of prison for the indignity of exile because it would have meant abandoning his faithful flock, his people.
Though concerned about his safety in prison, the Vatican did not order the bishop to leave, as the Sandinistas wanted and expected.
A year later, it seems unlikely that Alvarez changed his principled stand without compelling reasons. So why would he accept exile now?
This week's news of Álvarez's liberation and exile to Rome also shows the lengths to which the Sandinistas are willing to go to get their way. Last December, they launched a wave of arrests, once again using trumped-up charges, against nearly a dozen Catholic priests in various parts of the country.
The raids exhibited the efficiency of the Sandinista web of informants throughout the country. Whenever a priest mentioned Monseigneur Álvarez from the pulpit, police and paramilitary forces snatched and disappeared him to unknown locations without any official explanation. The arbitrariness and lack of due process aim at increasing fear among Nicaragua's Catholics, who are the last line of resistance against a budding totalitarian government that looks more and more like North Korea's.
For quite some time, the Vatican seemed content declaring platitudes about peaceful dialogue with the regime persecuting its priests and hurting its faithful. The Holy See has been known to trade the lives of its priests and faithful for the sake of keeping peace with reviled regimes like that in Beijing, for instance. I feared this might be the case in Nicaragua. Pope Francis, once the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, has been criticized for being far too conciliatory to Latin American dictators, with a special affinity for dictators of the radical left.
It appears that the Sandinistas have been more clever than the Maoists, giving the Vatican a little push, however. The Ortega Sandinista regime found a way to force the Vatican to take a more assertive stance. Reflecting on the recent raids, it seems that the new assaults on Roman clergy last December were a calculated effort to secure negotiation leverage with the Vatican. They constituted a concerted blackmail effort to prompt Pope Francis into decisive action. The target was Álvarez's obstinacy in refusing to leave and the Vatican's reluctance to command Archbishop Álvarez to exit Nicaragua.
For as long as Monseigneur Rolando Alvarez remained in prison in Nicaragua on his terms, the Sandinistas were shown to be embarrassingly weak. They could not stand being bested by a humble priest who challenged their human rights abuses and their abuse of power as well as their schemes and voluminous lies. Listening to the Sandinista Vice President, Rosario Murillo, the wife of President Daniel Ortega, on her daily radio show rants, it is easy to see how personally she took Alvarez's steely resolve.
Alvarez's refusal to be forced to leave showed him in charge of his destiny, thumbing his nose at a regime hungry for total control of the country. It undermined the self-perceived grandeur of their tyrannical authority and oversized bravado. It also emphasised, almost daily, the brutality of a mendacious regime charging men of God with unthinkable political crimes that only the hyperpartisan ideologues in Nicaragua could accept.
In exchange for the liberation of the priests kidnapped in December and probably a vague Sandinista commitment from the tyrants the violence and kidnappings of priests would subside, if not stop altogether, the Vatican would persuade Alvarez to leave. Alvarez was previously content to assume the responsibility for his suffering but would not easily accept being the cause of the suffering of his fellow priests.
As part of that deal, the Vatican would have finally ordered Bishop Alvarez to leave the country, not so much to override his will and his sense of duty toward his countrymen and women, but to prevent the greater evil of more persecution against priests and church faithful --only time will tell whether the Sandinistas would intend to honour such deal. The Sandinistas have been at open war with the Roman Catholic Church for several years now. But given his earlier commitment to stay with his flock, Alvarez’s departure must have been coerced. Similarly, considering that Alvarez has been unwilling to participate in promoting Sandinista lies, the Sandinistas would have had secretly to repeal the treason sentence against him, or quietly erase it, in exchange for his departure.
Keeping the deal secret serves the Sandinistas more than anyone. It obscures the fact that Alvarez is still in charge of his soul, and has bent only to prevent the greater evil that the Sandinistas threatened his brethren and faithful with. In any case, Bishop Alvarez is deprived of his flock and Matagalpa continues to be deprived, as is the rest of the country, of the brave leadership that Bishop Alvarez offered. But this is not the last Nicaraguans will hear from him. I’m fairly certain of that.
Correction: The original post said Bishop Alvarez was imprisoned for almost 3 years. That’s wrong. He was first placed under house arrest on Auguat 19, 2022.