Rome, Italy, Aug 20, 2022 / 17:49 pm
The arrest of Bishop Rolando Jose Alvarez Lagos of Matagalpa is a "very serious act", which must focus attention on what is happening to Christians in Nicaragua, the head of the Italian bishops’ conference has said.
Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna indicated the Italian bishops’ solidarity with their Nicaraguan counterparts in a letter sent to Bishop Carlos Enrique Herrera Gutierrez of Jinotega, president of the Nicaraguan bishops’ conference.
Zuppi's initiative is not isolated. Cardinal Omella, president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, had had a similar initiative, and it is to be imagined that other episcopal conferences will take a stand. On the other hand, by now the anti-Christian virulence of the Ortega presidency in Nicaragua has reached a new summit with the arrest of a bishop - and of seminarians and other priests who were with him - which took place after an escalation of invasions of his privacy, and also the closure of diocesan television channels.
The breaking point had been with the expulsion of the nuncio to the country, Archbishop Waldemar Sommertag, who had also started a difficult dialogue with the government, especially for the release of political prisoners, after the failed national dialogue in which the bishops had initially participated as mediators. Ortega had then accused them of being agents of the enemy, and the attacks, violence, even the beating of the bishops had begun.