SÃO PAULO, Brazil – Nicaragua canceled the legal status of the Diocese of Matagalpa’s Caritas organization on Aug. 12 for alleged bureaucratic reasons. That has been the most recent attack on the diocese headed by Bishop Rolando Alvarez, a vocal critic of the regime currently in exile in the Vatican.
According to the decision published by Minister of the Interior María Amelia Coronel Kinloch, Matagalpa’s Caritas failed to present its financial reports between 2020-2023, and its directive board’s tenure expired in 2022.
The measure, which also impacted 14 other civic organizations – including a number of Christian churches – puts an end to a number of programs managed by Caritas aiming to support peasants and poor urban families.
Analysts have been pointing out that leader Daniel Ortega has been waging a strategic dismantling of the Diocese of Matagalpa since Alvarez confronted his regime in 2022, when he denounced the persecution that he was facing and announced a hunger strike.
In August of 2022, agents of the regime broke into the episcopal residence and detained Alvarez and eight priests. In February of 2023, the bishop refused to get into a plane with other political prisoners and go to exile in the United States. The act apparently infuriated Ortega, and Alvarez was sent to trial on the following day. He was sentenced to 26 years in prison for treason and for spreading fake news. In January of 2024, Alvarez was sent to exile in the Vatican along with 17 other clerics.
Since then, Ortega has taken numerous measures affecting Matagalpa. The most impacting one was the detention of seven priests of the diocese and another one of Estelí – which is also apostolically administered by Alvarez – effectuated at the end of July. On Aug. 7, seven Nicaraguan priests were sent to the Vatican, six of them from Matagalpa.
Between Aug. 10-11, the regime arrested four other Catholics in Matagalpa and Estelí. Father Denis Martinez Garcia was detained on Sunday as he prepared to celebrate Mass in Matagalpa. Originally a member of the clergy in Managua, he helped to officiate celebrations in Matagalpa on the weekends due to the growing lack of priests in the diocese.
Father Leonel Balmaceda, a vicar in the city of La Trinidad, in the Diocese of Estelí, was also arrested by the regime on Saturday. On the same day, police agents detained two lay women in the region as well, Lesbia Gutierrez, who coordinated one of the Caritas’s programs in Matagalpa, and Carmen Saenz, an expert in canon law who collaborated with the Diocese of Matagalpa in matters regarding matrimonial annulment.
All those measures are part of Ortega’s revenge on Alvarez for his acts of defiance, said Felix Ríos Gadea, a former priest exiled in Costa Rica. Ríos knew Alvarez when in the seminary in Guatemala and emphasized that he has always demonstrated a firm stance when it comes to the defense of human rights and of the evangelical principles.
“As a young Catholic, Alvarez was a conscious objector and refused the 1980s policies connected to war that led so many young people to die on the battlefield [during the Sandinista Revolution],” he told Crux.
Now, priests who keep their coherence and freedom of thought are again being persecuted by Ortega, Ríos added.
“It’s also a persecution of the Church due to its important role, especially among churchgoers who keep their discerning capabilities. That’s not convenient for the regime, as it goes against its interests,” he said.
Ríos said it’s a crime of the regime to take possession of the Church’s properties by claiming that there are legal reasons to do so.
“Thousands of institutions have been closed for failing to comply with the government’s policies. That’s only an indication of the government’s failure to administer that segment,” he said.
In the opinion of lawyer Eliseo Núñez, a Nicaraguan political analyst currently in exile in Costa Rica, all those measures Ortega has been taking against the Church are also a form of exerting pressure on the Vatican in order to make it appoint bishops who are closer to his regime.
“He would like to see the current Bishop of León [René Sándigo] replacing the Archbishop of Managua [Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes], who has already presented his renunciation,” Núñez told Crux.
Ortega’s plan is also that the Pope substitutes Alvarez in Matagalpa (and Estelí), he added.
“That way, he would have four bishops close to the government,” Núñez went on.
The current clergy is largely in the opposition, he said, but there are a few priests who support Ortega and could occupy those places.
In parallel, Rosario Murillo, Ortega’s wife and vice president, keeps trying to play an awkward role as a mediator of the religiosity of the people and the State. On a daily show broadcasted by several radio stations, Murillo reads the Gospel and makes political commentary, in an attempt to raise her voice above the country’s churches.
“That’s why they keep shutting down several Christian entities. She’s convinced that she can direct the people’s spirituality,” Núñez said.
The campaign against Rolando Alvarez, therefore, is far from ending.
“They need to hurt a bishop who has such a high moral stature among Nicaraguans,” Felix Ríos said.
