along with 18 other religious political prisoners
Bishops of Matagalpa and Siuna, 15 priests, and two seminarians were banished early this morning. More than 100 political prisoners remain in jail
HAVANA TIMES – The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo banished the bishop of Matagalpa, Monsignor Rolando Jose Alvarez to the Vatican early this Sunday, January 14, along with 18 other religious people who were imprisoned between Christmas and New Year’s holidays of December 2023. Bishop Alvarez was a political prisoner for more than a year and had been sentenced to 26 years in prison on fabricated charges.
Among the other exiles are a bishop, 15 priests, and two seminarians held as political prisoners of the regime, sources linked to the Catholic Church in exile revealed to CONFIDENCIAL, while the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship and the Vatican have not yet provided any official information. More than 100 political prisoners remain in the jails of the regime in Nicaragua.
Who are the 19 exiled religious people?
Monsignor Alvarez, bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Esteli, is one of the most heard pastoral and prophetic voices inside and outside Nicaragua in recent years.
The regime’s police locked Monsignor Alvarez and a group of priests and lay people in the Episcopal Palace of Matagalpa on August 4, 2022. Fifteen days later he was transferred from Matagalpa to Managua under de facto house arrest.
On February 9, 2023, after refusing to accept the banishment order to the United States imposed by the regime on 222 political prisoners, Bishop Alvarez was taken out of house arrest and transferred to the maximum security cells of La Modelo prison, known as El Infiernillo. The following day, Judge Nadia Tardencilla Rodriguez, of the Second District Trial Court in Managua, sentenced him to 26 years and four months in prison in a process considered by experts as a “criminal action.”
A second attempt by the regime to banish Monsignor Alvarez occurred the first week of July 2023, this time through “contacts” established with the Vatican. But the bishop did not accept the terms imposed for his banishment and was returned to his cell in El Infiernillo on the morning of Wednesday, July 5.
One of those released Sunday was Monsignor Isidoro Mora, bishop of Siuna, a municipality located in the Mining Triangle of Nicaragua’s Northern Caribbean.
Mora was arrested on December 20, 2023, along with two seminarians, one day after praying for Bishop Alvarez during a homily – transmitted through social networks.
Bishop Mora, 63, was intercepted by the Police when he was on his way to the Santa Cruz parish, in the municipality of La Cruz de Rio Grande, where he was scheduled to perform confirmations to 230 parishioners.
“I would like to express the greetings of the Episcopal Conference (of Nicaragua). We are always united in prayer for this beloved Diocese of Matagalpa, praying for Monsignor Rolando, and praying for the journey of each one of you. We are united in prayer, in communion, in faith, in love, in tenderness,” said Monsignor Mora during the mass on the occasion of the 99th anni