ROME — Exiled Nicaraguan Bishop Silvio José Báez said Sunday that what is needed in Nicaragua is freedom and not negotiations with dictator Daniel Ortega, in an apparent correction to Pope Francis, who has called for “dialogue” to resolve the situation of persecution of the church there.
Earlier on Sunday, the pontiff said he was following Nicaragua’s travails closely “with concern and sorrow,” appealing for “an open and sincere dialogue” in order to attain “a respectful and peaceful co-existence” between the Church and the Ortega regime.
To many Nicaraguan Catholics, the pope’s words were simply too little too late, barely breaking his perplexing silence over the ongoing persecution of the Church in the country.
On Friday, Nicaraguan police arrested the bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando Alvarez, for alleged “destabilizing and provocative” activities. The authorities had already locked down Alvarez’s residence, holding him under unofficial house arrest for two weeks. The bishop has now been taken to Managua, some 81 miles away from his home.
Nicaraguan citizens hold a demonstration in front of the Nicaraguan Embassy in Costa Rica in San Jose, on August 19, 2022, to protest against the Nicaraguan government and the detention of Nicaraguan bishop and regime critic Rolando Alvarez. (OSCAR NAVARRETE/AFP via Getty Images)
In his homily, Báez threw his full support behind Bishop Alvarez, calling for his liberation, along with that of the scores of political prisoners in Nicaragua.
“We must ask for freedom. We must not negotiate for people. We must ask for freedom, because they are innocent,” Bishop Báez said in a Mass celebrated at Saint Agatha parish in Miami Sunday.
“I want you to know that I am suffering a lot and praying a lot for you, for Nicaragua and for our church,” he said. “I especially want to greet with affection our brothers and sisters of the diocese of Matagalpa and Esteli who are being at this moment deprived of the physical presence of their pastor, and I know that for them it is a great sorrow.”
On the day of Alvarez’s arrest, Báez forcefully condemned the bishop’s “kidnapping,” calling on his abductors to “respect his dignity and release him!”
“Once again, the dictatorship outdoes its own evil and its diabolical spirit,” he added in a Twitter post.
Pope Francis asked Báez to leave Nicaragua in 2019 following a series of death threats against him and his family. He has long been one of the loudest voices in opposing the Ortega regime, which reportedly killed over 350 protesters in 2018 and currently has 190 leaders of the opposition in prison, cut off from their families.
This year, the Ortega government expelled the papal nuncio, Archbishop Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, as well as 18 nuns of the Missionaries of Charity order founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
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