June 7 () –
The Archbishop of Seville, José Ángel Saiz Meneses, received this Thursday night the Nicaraguan bishop Rolando Álvarez, who had been sentenced to 26 years in prison and stripped of his nationality as a “traitor to the country”, to later be exiled to the Vatican after an agreement between the Government of Nicaragua and the Holy See.
“Visit of Monsignor Rolando Álvarez Lagos, bishop of Matagalpa and Apostolic Administrator of Estelí (Nicaragua). Courtesy and rest visit. Archbishop’s Palace, Seminary, Cathedral, Priest’s House,” the archbishop has published on his account on the social network .
Álvarez was sentenced to 26 years in prison in February 2023 for the alleged commission of crimes of conspiracy, propagation of false news, obstruction of functions and contempt of authority, and he spent more than 500 days in prison.
The Nicaraguan bishop is a member of the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua (CEN) and in the country he is recognized for his work in defense of Human Rights against the repression of the Sandinista Government. In fact, in 2022 he became the first bishop of the Catholic Church to be arrested since Ortega came to power in 2007.
The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, has criticized the Catholic Church on numerous occasions, which he has described as a “perfect dictatorship” and of “using” its bishops to “carry out a coup d’état” in the Central American country, assuring that some priests, “demons in cassocks”, made calls for bloodshed during the wave of protests against the Government in 2018, which resulted in the deaths of more than 300 people.
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