Pope Francis ‘saddened’ by Nicaraguan bishop Roland Álvarez’s prison term

Pope Francis Sunday said he was “saddened” and worried after Roman Catholic Bishop Roland Álvarez was sentenced to 26 years in prison for speaking out against the Nicaraguan government.

Álvarez, 56, learned his fate from a Managua appeals court Friday after refusing to board a plane to the US with 222 other opponents of President Daniel Ortega. The the bishop of Matagalpa was also stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship.

“The news that arrived from Nicaragua has saddened me no little,” Francis told worshippers gathered in St. Peter’s Square for a weekly blessing. The pope asked the politicians behind the strong sentence to “open their hearts.”

Álvarez was among several other Catholic leaders arrested in August for being critical of Ortega’s increasingly authoritarian regime. The strongman ordered the release of Álvarez and hundreds of other political prisoners Thursday, and flew some of them to Washington, D.C.

The bishop, who had been under house arrest, refused to board the plane to freedom because he wasn’t allowed to consult with other church leaders first, a move Ortega labeled “absurd.” Álvarez was then sentenced for undermining the government, spreading false information, obstruction of functions and disobedience, and sent to a Modelo prison.

The severe sentence came as Ortega — a one-time leftist revolutionary who had first been elected president in 1984, but had gradually dialed up his authoritarianism since retaking power in 2007 — looked to crack down on the church, which is the last independent institution trusted by many Nicaraguans.

Álvarez’s sentence “constitutes the most severe repression against the Catholic Church in Latin America since the assassination of Guatemalan Bishop Juan José Gerardi in 1998,” said Andrew Chesnut, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Álvarez had been an outspoken dissenter of Ortega since a wave of protests against his government led to crackdowns on opponents in 2018.

“We hope there would be a series of electoral reforms, structural changes to the electoral authority — free, just and transparent elections, international observation without conditions,” Álvarez said a month after the protests broke out. “Effectively the democratization of the country.”

The president had initially asked the church to mediate the conflict, but within months it came under fire by government supporters, who fired on a church while 155 student protestors hid under the pews for some 15 hours, killing a student who died on the rectory floor.

Ortega had more recently accused Catholic leaders of being part of a supposed plot to depose him, and had seized several radio stations owned by the diocese.

He agreed to release the hundreds of political prisoners, labeled “terrorists” to a US ambassador at the suggestion of Vice President Rosario Murillo, his wife, the president recounted in a rambling speed Thursday.

The pope’s Sunday comments marked the first time he had publicly mentioned the situation since August.

“Since first becoming the ruling party in 1979 the Sandinistas have repressed the Catholic Church like few other regimes in Latin America,” Chesnut said.

“Pope Francis has refrained from criticizing President Ortega for fear of inflaming the situation, but many believe that now is the time for him to speak out prophetically in defense of the most persecuted Church in Latin America.”

“The Catholic Church, I think, is one of the main institutions that the Ortega regime really, really fears,” Antonio Garrastazu, regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Republican Institute in Washington, said before the the sentencing.

“The Catholic Church are really the ones that can actually change the hearts and minds of the people.”

The sentence imposed on Álvarez was “arbitrary and last minute” and included crimes that were no part of the bishop’s original conviction, according to Vilma Núñez, director of the Nicaragua Center for Human Rights.

“The personal well-being and life of the Monsignor is in danger,” Núñez said.

With AP wires