Rolando Álvarez, the rebellious bishop that irritates Ortega and Murillo

Rolando Álvarez, the rebellious bishop that irritates Ortega and Murillo

By DIVERGENTES, May 24, 2022

He has become the most critical voice within the Church in Nicaragua. He has taken Sandinism on head on since the 1980s when he took refuge in Guatemala in opposition to Obligatory Military Service. During the 2018 crisis, he showed solidarity with the victims of the repression and that cost him reprisals, among them threats and attacks. The image of him leading a procession amid Police bullets in the northern part of the country is now famous. For some days now he has been pursued by the National Police everywhere. His messages and homilies have a deep impact on parishioners fed up with the dictatorship.

 A water and rehydration liquid fast unleashed the hysteria of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega against the bishop Rolando Álvarez , the uncomfortable voice of the Church. He announced his fast as a form of pressure to stop the harassment of the regime against him, but the result was worse. Patrol cars of the National Police which follow him since 2018, have increased the persecution in recent days. Since this past Thursday, Álvarez was sheltered in a parish in Managua because several police pickup trucks were closely following him. Outside the church they formed a blockade that kept him immobile until the morning of this Monday May 23rd, when they withdrew and the bishop was able to leave for Matagalpa, his archdiocese. Nevertheless, the Police followed him. And around the bishop´s office they put together another blockade for when the priest arrived, in a show of the irritation of the regime against a prelate who has stood up to them.

Mons. Rolando Álvarez, Bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa and Estelí, is maybe at this moment the most critical voice against the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo within the Catholic Church. After the forced exile of Mons. Silvio Báez, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Managua, and Edwin Román, pastor of Masaya, the homilies of Álvarez have become the only ones within Nicaraguan territory where the authoritarianism of the presidential couple is criticized. “Do not do to the faithful what you would like to do to me, if you are going to do it, do it to me and not to the faithful, not to the holy People of God, I say to you with all clarity and simplicity,” he said in the homily of April 15th, after revealing that a woman parishioner in Matagalpa was attacked.

The police harassment of bishop Rolando Álvarez is part of a new wave of repression against the Catholic Church. In addition to Álvarez, the pastor of the St John the Baptist church in Masaya, Harving Padilla, has denounced that he is under police and paramilitary surveillance for nine days. The Police put up a blockade on that parish where they did not allow the circulation of vehicles nor people. They did not allow religious to enter the church either. “I am under church arrest,” denounced Padilla.

On Thursday evening the bishop had announced that he was going to hold an indefinite fast based on water and rehydration liquids until the Police let him know that “they were going to respect my family circle.” At the same time, they announced activities that would be broadcast by the Catholic Channel, a media administered by the Episcopal Conference with religious content. On social networks there were expressions of solidarity with the bishop. Many people began to follow the pages of the religious channel to stay up on what was happening. Nevertheless, the following day the regime ordered the elimination of Channel 51, the Catholic Channel, from the television listings through the Nicaraguan Telecommunications Institute (TELCOR).

That day, Rosario Murillo, said that “there are those who use lies to stand out,” in an allusion to the religious. “This is terrible, there are those who use lies to be bosses in any job, to get ahead of others in the same job, a job that perhaps has its benefits for them, for those who lie,” added Murillo.

On social networks graphic montages are circulating where Mons. Álvarez is seen handcuffed by police, in the blue jumpers that prisoners are given in Nicaragua. “Under every cassock there is a common man, full of vices, greed and impious thoughts,” published Juan Carlos Ortega Murillo, son of the presidential couple, in a tweet this Sunday.

The signs are similar to those that were sent to opposition leaders who later were jailed starting in May of last year. The faithful consulted are afraid that Bishop Álvarez might be the target of a new wave of jailings. “We are praying for Mons,” says a parishioner, while on the Facebook profile page of the Diocese of Matagalpa  a campaign is being held of prayer and fasting “accompanying Mons. Rolando José Álvarez.”

Exile to Guatemala

Rolando José Álvarez Lagos was born in Managua in 1966. He currently is 56 years old and has been ordained for 28 years. As a child he was educated in religious schools and groups in Managua. Being a pastoral leader of the Archdiocese of Managua, he was opposed to the Obligatory Military Service of the Sandinista Army in the 1980s and that caused him to be jailed a couple of times. He had to leave Nicaragua to take refuge in Guatemala. “We belonged to a generation of youth who had to win our freedom at the price of persecution and pain,” Álvarez told Magazine in May 2018.

He finished high school in Guatemala and went into the Seminary at the age of 21. His theological studies he did in the Interdiocesan Seminary of Fatimah in Managua and finished his studies in Roma and Spain. He was consecrated bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa 11 years ago. Since that time he has visited each one of the 630 rural communities that make up his ecclesiastical jurisdiction to celebrate baptisms and marry parishioners.

Prior to the 2018 crisis, he was seen dancing in the communities. He would get on buses to preach and was one of the first to open a Whatsapp account to be in contact with parishioners. In 2015 he called for a march in the municipality of Rancho Grande, which 15,000 people attended to oppose a mining exploitation project that the regime of Ortega and Murillo had granted to a Canadian multinational company. The outpouring of opponents caused the project to be declared “unviable.” On that occasion Álvarez thanked the leaders for “listening to that massive pilgrimage that we held.”

Álvarez also criticized the police behavior in the case of Juan Lanzas, a peasant from Matagalpa who had to have his legs amputated after undergoing a beating in a police station. “It was a brutal act, excessive, savage,” Álvarez said.

The words of Álvarez at that time were just going to be the prelude to what would happen starting on April 18, 2018. He participated in the first National Dialogue between the regime and the opposition with the Church as mediator. At the end of that tense situation, the bishops proposed s series of reforms of the State, among them the holding of early elections, which was interpreted by Ortega as a “coup attempt.” Since then, the religious have experienced persecution from police and paramilitaries and the relationship with them could not be worse. In March the representative of the Vatican, the Polish bishop Waldemar Sommertag, was expelled from the country, a decision that the Holy See considered “incomprehensible.”

In the eyes of the dictatorship

Four years ago, in May 2018 Mons. Rolando Álvarez arrived in Sébaco, a municipality of Matagalpa, to show solidarity with the victims of the repression of Ortega and Murillo. “I come to pray for the people and with the people of God,” he said on arriving at the Immaculate Church there. He visited the wounded, offered a crowded mass, and in the end walked the streets along with parishioners, while the police and paramilitaries were attacking demonstrators. Bullets could be heard just a few meters away, but Álvarez continued at the front of the procession with the figure of the Blessed Sacrament held high in his arms.

Some weeks later, his vehicle was stopped by some truck drivers who were found sidelined by the blockade of highways – which demonstrators built as a form of protest – and Álvarez said to them “Respect the fatherland!”, a phrase that had a great national impact for its rebellious content.

This type of actions and his critical homilies in those months have placed him in the eyes of Ortega and Murillo since then. The bishop emeritus of Estelí, Abelardo Mata, said that in 2019 Rolando Álvarez was attacked by some mobs. According to Mata, at that time “Álvarez asked not to talk about that,” but that it is true that “he escaped from the bullets and was followed for some kilometers.”

What Álvarez did denounce was that in some of his visits in a community of Terabona in Matagalpa he was warned by peasants that he was surrounded by people dressed in military fatigues. “It was a very dangerous situation, not for my physical integrity, but for what could have happened to the people,” said Álvarez.

In the last image where he was seen, Roland Álvarez is praying the Holy Rosary in a Facebook transmission that Monday night. “St Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense and refuge against the perversity and onslaught of the devil,” said Álvarez, with his hands together and before the Virgin of Fatimah. And he added, “You, prince of the heavenly hosts, throw into hell with your Divine Power Satan and the other evil spirits that are about in the world for the loss of souls. Amen.”