Bishop Alvarez sent back to jail in Nicaragua

Nicaraguan authorities have returned a Catholic bishop to jail after he refused to go into exile in Italy. Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa was sent back the Jorge Navarro de Tipitapa National Penitentiary System, a notorious prison known as “La Modelo”, after negotiations with government officials broke down. The hard-left dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega was hoping that he could be persuaded to accept exile Rome but he refused to go. He was taken from La Modelo to the headquarters of the Nicaraguan bishops’ conference in Managua, the capital, but sent back to jail after just two days. He will now serve out a 26-year sentence for “undermining national security and sovereignty, spreading fake news through information technology, obstructing an official in the performance of his duties, aggravated disobedience or contempt of authority”. Bishop Álvarez resisted an attempt to fly him to the United States when he refused to board a plane with 222 other political and religious prisoners in February. He was tried and jailed the next day. He is understood to be among 37 other political prisoners who remain in Nicaraguan jails since the dictator Ortega cracked down on political rivals, the free press and the Catholic Church. According to Auxiliary Bishop Silvio José Báez of Managua, who is in exile in Florida, the bishop will leave Nicaragua only if Pope Francis specifically commands his departure. More than 500 attacks on the Church followed the efforts of senior clergy to mediate in the national unrest of 2018 that claimed more than 300 lives and because of its calls for democratic reforms and for human rights to be upheld. Ortega eventually agreed to elections in 2021 but he and Rosario Murillo, his wife and vice president, cleared the field of opposition by arresting seven other presidential candidates along with 140 politicians, intellectuals, businessmen, former diplomats and journalists. They include former Sandinista rebels who had once fought alongside him in the 1970s and 1980s. Amid the crackdown, cathedrals and churches have been besieged and firebombed, and bishops and clergy depicted as enemies of the people siding with “coup plotters”.