Mons. Canales: “They have asked that there be silence.”
In La Prensa March 31, 2024
The Bishop of Danlí, Honduras, José Antonio Canales, speaks cautiously about his conversations with Mons. Rolando Álvarez and other priests banished from Nicaragua, but states that “they are not well.”
The Honduras Bishop, José Antonio Canales did not celebrate the release from prison of Mons. Rolando Álvarez, nor the release of the other priests detained in the jails of Nicaragua by the regime of Daniel Ortega. The reason is that for him it was not a liberation, but a punishment which the dictatorship imposed on those banished.
Canales is the bishop of the Diocese of Danlí. He has received several Nicaraguan religious and laity there who arrived fleeing the repression. “We have even helped them with their negotiation of parole” [humanitarian parole, a program of the US govt], he commented.
He grew close to Rolando Álvarez thanks to the pastoral activities of both of them. He also speaks periodically with Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes, who he says cannot be required to have a confrontational attitude about the persecution which the Church in Nicaragua is experiencing. “It is not the same to speak from outside the country,” he points out.
In this interview, Canales talks about the intentions of Daniel Ortega to submit the Church to the Chinese model, in addition to the fact that Holy Week was experienced under repression in the country, and about the posture of the bishops of the region about the situation of the Nicaraguan church. Even though he did not reveal many details about the conversations which he has had with the banished priests, he states that “they are not well”, after having been expelled from the country.
How do you evaluate this Holy Week in Nicaragua, where there were no processions and religious activities remained under surveillance by the regime?
We have always seen that Nicaragua has been more religious than Honduras, and we really understand that what is happening in Nicaragua is much worse that if that same thing were happening in Honduras, because of the strength of the faith in Nicaragua, the rootedness that exists with their traditions, their processions, their related events, and around the figure of Christ who dies, who suffers first and who lives the experience of rejection, scorn, margination, insults, and later then also specifically in his Passion and Death.
What is happening in Nicaragua must be more painful, I repeat, because of the strong Catholic tradition of Nicaraguans. We very much regret that suffering because the people truly suffer, even though from the government they want to say that everything is marvelous, that everything is good, that all is in peace, that that country is a land of wonders, well it is not true. We know that, and Nicaraguans now at this point also are not going to allow themselves to be deceived. The huge majority of Nicaraguans are no longer going to allow themselves to be deceived when there is a reality which does not match official discourse. In each Eucharist we remember the Church of Nicaragua, with a very heavy heart, with a lot of pain, but so that they might feel our fraternal closeness in these very difficult times.
How can the faithful live this Holy Week without the freedom to profess their religion?
There is something that no one is going to steal from Nicaraguans, and it is the experience of their interior faith. Acts can be suppressed and everything that you might want to repress, but you are not going to be able to suppress the hearts of Nicaraguans. You are not going to be able to get in there. I am one of those who have always said that this is going to end, and I am convinced that sooner rather than later it is going to end and the Nicaraguan Church is going to come out even more strengthened, because with this reflection which each Nicaraguan is having in a heart in which no one else can penetrate, neither the Police, nor the Army, nor demonstrations, their faith is going to be strengthened.
Secondly, Nicaraguan families can have their ways of the cross within their homes and in parish communities, as they best are able. There are some [churches] which have a large courtyard, and which have their processions there within the courtyard, within the Church. They can adapt to that reality, but the faith has to continue, because it is the biggest treasure that Nicaraguans have, their Catholic faith, their Christian faith.
Last January Mons. Roland Álvarez was freed and banished to Rome. How did you receive that news?
Sincerely I did not share the joy that many Nicaraguans felt at that moment. A Nicaraguan priest told me that the rest of the prisoners had a less painful experience, because the rejection which certain authorities had in the penal centers where the priests were, it was a more pronounced contempt than with the rest of the prisoners. The priests were treated in a more unjust manner than the rest of the prisoners, so a lot of people, because they knew what was happening, expressed satisfaction that they were “liberated.”
I put in quotes “liberated” because it cannot be called liberation when they cast you out into another country which is not your land where you were born, where you grew up, where you were ordained a priest to serve your people, so I was not happy when that liberation happened, because even I know that many of them did not want to leave, even remaining in jail. I was not euphoric. Just the opposite. There was a mix of sentiments, because no one can be happy when supposedly they free you, but they send you to live in a land which is not your own. This is practically a punishment which has been given to these brothers without deserving it.
Have you been able to speak with Mons. Rolando Álvarez or the rest of the banished priests?
Now in terms of that, well they have asked that there be silence. I am not going to reveal anything in that sense respecting any request which I have had about that topic. I obey some guidelines which they have given me, and I prefer in this case to not give comments about my communication with them.
Can we at least know whether they are well?
They are not well. What can I tell you? They are not well because no one can be well in a foreign land when it has not been their will to be taken there. They are not well, and the suffering continues for many of them.
Do you think that there was a negotiation between the Church and the regime of Ortega so that this liberation happened?
Officially I have no information about negotiations. No authority of the Holy See has informed me about this type of agreement or negotiations, but they are going to be perhaps very bitter negotiations because it is difficult to sit down and converse with people who have caused so much harm. I do not discard that the Holy See (has conversed), because the Church is more than 2000 years old, it is not the first time that the Church has confronted this type of dictatorial governments.
The Church has had to deal for 20 centuries with dictatorial governments. The truth is that Nicaragua is not the first, and the Church has this long history of dealing with countries, governments who have placed intolerance above all else. But they must have been very difficult dialogues because the State of Nicaragua, the current government, better said, has hit the Church very hard in its structure, in its priestly resource. I do not have official knowledge about this, but they would not be very easy dialogues.
In Nicaragua it is perceived that Daniel Ortega wants to have a Church like the Church in China.
The Government of Nicaragua wants a Church that is mute, a sacramental Church, a Church which is praying in its buildings, but does not want a Church of Christ the Liberator. So yes, I believe that this is very clear, I believe that any Nicaraguan and any person with a minimum of intelligence, well knows that in reality what they want is a completely mute Church which does not represent Jesus Christ the Liberator. The case of China, well it endures that, but it is not easy for the Church to accept not proclaiming the liberating Gospel, which is its mission to do so.
You are the Secretary General of the Bishops of Central America. What do the Episcopal Conferences of the region say about what the Church of Nicaragua is experiencing?
We conferences have been very respectful of what the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua is telling us. In that sense we remain expectant about what the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua might tell us. This has been the posture. When the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference asks us for something, we will be there ready to support it, but we respect that it is their territory, it is their reality. The bishops there are living a reality which we are not experiencing in the rest of the countries of Central America, therefore, we have to be respectful and wait for the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference to ask us for some action, and even some omission. We are always waiting, and they know that they are our brothers and that we are attentive to their request for our aid.
What actions or omissions has the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua asked of you?
Well, they ask us to pray for everyone, for the Nicaraguan Church. They thank us for our fraternal gestures which we say in the meetings, in some moments of communication. We continue praying for them. There is no mass in the Diocese of Danlí, above all in the Cathedral, where we do not have a special prayer for the Church which suffers in Nicaragua. For now, they thank us a lot for our prayers, the fraternal closeness, and we are watching there for how things can take a more positive direction than what they have now.
There are those who ask Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes to be more vocal about the persecution that the Church is experiencing.
It is not the same thing to be a lay person, even one of those committed in the Church, and having a posture of leadership within the Church. We are respectful of the actions of the Nicaraguan bishops. They have been formed like us to deal with every type of situation.
It is not the same to speak from outside where I have all the freedom, to being inside Nicaragua, so he cannot be judged when we are not experiencing the reality that they are telling us about, but no matter how much they tell us, no one really experiences it like the bishops, priests, religious and laity. They are the ones who will know how to act based on what they really are experiencing there.
Have you received in your diocese Nicaraguan priests who are fleeing the repression in Nicaragua?
I also will reserve this precisely because of the families. We are so close, for example, I am talking to you now and I am 35 minutes from Nicaragua. It is incredible how closer I am to Nicaragua than to the capital of my country. I feel Nicaragua in each minute because I just go by one of the villages, and I have a big border with Nicaragua, because almost all of the eastern part of the province of El Paraíso borders Nicaragua, so it ends up being nice that when I get close to that entire border territory the message appears on my cellphone that I am now in Nicaragua. “Welcome to Nicaragua”, it shows me constantly.
You always have spoken forcefully against the dictatorship, being so close to Nicaragua, are you not afraid of some clandestine activity against you?
I think it would be very reckless on their part because I believe that what is least helpful to Nicaragua is an international conflict. I commend myself to the Lord every day, but I think that it would be very reckless to harm any person, regardless of whether it be myself the Bishop, or any Nicaraguan person here in Honduras, and that they would attempt to harm any Nicaraguan or a person of another nationality in the territory of our country.
Personal plane
José Antonio Canales Motiño was born March 19, 1962 in La Lima, Cortés in northern Honduras. He says he has been a good friend of Mons. Rolando Álvarez and Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes.
He is a lawyer, a profession which he practiced for four years before becoming a priest. He likes sports, listening to music and he loves seeing historical and biographical documentaries.
Currently he is bishop of the Diocese of Danlí, Honduras, which borders with Nicaragua. In addition, he is Secretary General of the Secretariat of Bishops of Central America (SEDAC) from where he has raised his voice in defense of the Nicaraguan Catholic Church.
He likes “baleadas” a lot, a typical Honduran food made with tortillas and beans. “When I go to the villages, to the hamlets, to those places in the mountains, I enjoy eating what the people eat. I never ask for special food, but just what people have for me I eat and that is good,” he commented.