After imprisoning Catholic bishops and over a dozen priests, Nicaragua’s socialist dictator Daniel Ortega has expelled them from the country. Bishops Rolando Alvarez and Isidoro Mora, along with 17 other priests and seminarians, were forcibly exiled by Ortega and sent to the Vatican.
Nicaragua said it expelled 19 clergymen to the Vatican on Sunday, including Catholic Bishop Rolando Alvarez, a prominent critic of President Daniel Ortega.
Bishop Isidoro Mora, 15 priests and two seminarians who were detained in Nicaragua were also expelled.
Nicaragua thanked Pope Francis and other Church members for “the very respectful and discreet coordination carried out to make possible the trip to the Vatican” for the clergymen, in a statement shared on local media outlet El 19.
Alvarez, the bishop of Matagalpa, forcefully criticized the government’s deadly response to mass protests in 2018, and was convicted of treason and sentenced to a 26-year prison term earlier this year.
“Thank God he is gone, exiled but now free,” a family member of one of the expelled clergy members said.
Mora was arrested in December for saying at a mass that he was praying for Alvarez, sources said.
Ortega cracked down on the Catholic Church in Nicaragua for its outspoken criticism of his brutal oppression. However, unlike his communist mentors in Havana, Ortega has never been able to subjugate and control the Catholic hierarchy in Nicaragua like the Castro dictatorship was able to do in Cuba.
So will Bergoglio now denounce and condemn Marxism in all its forms? Don’t hold your breath.