After 514 days in jail on trumped-up charges of treason at last this brave man was safely at the Vatican.
No longer was his life in any danger.
Disaster was finally averted.
In England, his release was “very much” welcomed by Bishop Declan Lang of Clifton, chair of the bishops’ Department for International Affairs, who also implied, perhaps wisely, that this was not quite a happy ending, an unmitigated triumph for life and liberty, by calling for sustained “prayers for all the people of Nicaragua, particularly those who strive to uphold human dignity and social justice”.
The ejection of Bishop Álvarez, along with another bishop, 15 priests and two seminarians, was nothing of the sort. While it was celebrated by some Catholics, it was presented in almost flippant, throwaway terms by the regime of President Daniel Ortega and wife and Vice-President Rosario Murillo.
In an official statement the regime thanked Pope Francis and Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, on behalf of the people of the country for their discreet efforts that had made the mass expulsion possible.
It did not use the words “mass expulsion”, “exile” or “ejection”, nor did it speak about its stripping citizens of their nationality. It spoke only of such clerics making a “viaje”, a word which translates into “trip” or “voyage”, as it set out to sugar coat its latest act of persecution.
Although Bishop Álvarez’s life has been saved, there can be no doubt that his exile from his country and from his flock is nothing less than an act of persecution. Of course it is wonderful that Bishop Álvarez and the others are now safe but the very fact of their exile should cause alarm throughout the free world because it is, but for what it signifies: nothing less than the ongoing purge of the Catholic Church and its institutions from Nicaragua simply because they represent the last bastion of resistance to Ortega’s quest for absolute power.
Clerics like Bishop Álvarez are the last free-standing champions of the people an old school hard-left Latin American despot who purports to serve but who in reality is oppressing horribly while the world stands by and watches, troubled more by misleading reports from the Levant or propaganda in the latest proxy war between the United States and Russia.
Yet the only crime of the clerics kicked out of their own country was to express sympathy, even implicitly, for people seeking democratic change from Ortega’s rule. They have been treated like criminals, even as terrorists, since mass protests were staged against his administration in April 2018 and blamed for the unrest that followed.
Auxiliary Bishop Silvio Baez of Managua, now in exile in Florida, summed up the reasons for the Nicaraguan persecution succinctly in a speech shortly after Christmas when he said: “The tyrants are aware that the Nicaraguan people love their Church and their pastors and those who rule are terrified of the existence of a people awakened and mobilised by the Christian faith because they are a people who are critical, liberated, and the subject of their own history.”
One only has to look at the names of those on that plane to see how much the Church in Nicaragua has been depleted by the mid-January purge.
The Archdiocese of Managua, which covers the capital, is down by 11 priests. They include Mgr Carlos Aviles, a vicar general; Fr Hector Treminio, the archdiocesan treasurer, and Fr Ismael Reineiro Serrano Gudiel, the diocesan exorcist. Mgr Óscar Escoto Salgado, vicar general of the Diocese of Matagalpa, was also on the plane, along with Fr Jader Danilo Guido Acosta, the parochial vicar of the San Pedro Apóstol Cathedral of Matagalpa.
On board was also Bishop Isidoro del Carmen Mora Ortega of Siuna who was arrested and beaten shortly before Christmas just for praying publicly for the Álvarez at a time when there were serious fears for the incarcerated bishop’s health.
Their expulsion is another black day in the persecution of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua that has now reached a horrifying scale.
According to reports, a total of 203 priests and religious have been kicked out of the country since 2018, while the Catholic Church has suffered 740 attacks in that period.
Twenty priests were among the 222 political prisoners flown into exile in the United States in February and Bishop Álvarez was sentenced to 26 years in jail when he refused to join them.
A further 12 priests were exiled to the Vatican in October.
Ortega has also banished 85 nuns and religious sisters, including St Teresa of Calcutta’s Missionaries of Charity. These women are not political agitators but people selflessly dedicated to loving Jesus through the service of poor.
He has closed and confiscated Catholic institutions, including the John Paul II Catholic University and the Autonomous Christian University Association of Nicaragua and shut down more than a dozen newspaper and radio and television channels.
Pope Francis was largely reticent about the deteriorating situation in Nicaragua, but that might have been because efforts were under way to secure the release of Bishop Álvarez and the other clerics, and it was only at the beginning of the year that he spoke with any clear concern about those “deprived of their freedom”, mentioning also his “closeness in prayer” to such clergy and his hopes “that the path of dialogue will always be sought to overcome difficulties”.
Meaningful dialogue would be ideal, yet it also brings to mind the aphorism of Sir Winston Church that “you cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth”. It is Daniel Ortega who is calling the shots here, and no-one else. The stage of meaningful dialogue has not yet been reached.
Partly that is because the international community has not acted with an iota of conviction against the clear human rights abuses being committed in Nicaragua.
While western warlords slaver insanely at the jaws for a Third World War with nuclear-armed Russia, they do practically nothing to end the persecution of the poor of country in what America famously refers to as its “back yard”.
Nothing will change in Nicaragua unless the international community wakes up to the enormity of the crimes being committed there and does something about them. If Joe Biden can send Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Howitzers to Kiev, then want can’t he impose sanctions on Nicaragua that might at least make Ortega and Murillo suppose they cannot persecute the Church and oppress the poor with impunity?
Is it because this so-called Catholic President simply doesn’t want to?
It is not enough to issue an indolent sigh of relief every time President Ortega purges Nicaragua of its clergy because soon the Church will be barely standing at all.