2023-06-22 23:38:03
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva offered to mediate with his Nicaraguan counterpart Daniel Ortega to release Catholic Bishop Rolando Álvarez, sentenced to 26 years in prison last February, the South American president said Thursday.
Lula made his willingness known to journalists, following holding a meeting in the Vatican with Pope Francis, who expressed his concern regarding the imprisonment of Monsignor Álvarez, bishop of Matagalpa (north).
“The Church has a problem in Nicaragua because there are bishops who are imprisoned. The only thing the Church wants is for Nicaragua to release the bishop (Rolando Álvarez) so that he can go to Italy,” declared the Brazilian president.
“I want to talk to Daniel Ortega regarding freeing the bishop,” added Lula, following considering that “there is no reason” for the religious “to be prevented from exercising his function in the Church.”
“I’m going to try to help, if I can help,” he insisted.
Lula’s statement caused astonishment in the press, since he is the first president to offer to intercede for Bishop Álvarez, who is imprisoned in a jail north of Managua and in February was sentenced to 26 years in prison for refusing to be exiled along with 222 released opponents, sent by Ortega on a plane to the United States.
Daniel Ortega and Lula da Silva have an old friendship that began during the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua (1979-1990), when the then Brazilian union leader visited the Central American country on numerous occasions to meet with the Nicaraguan leftist politician, who was president for the first time. time from 1985 to 1990.
Lula’s offer for the release of Bishop Álvarez comes amid a controversy in the context of the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS), where Nicaraguan opponents accused the Brazilian president of trying to “soften” a resolution on Nicaragua that might be presented this week in plenary.
According to Ortega’s opponents, Brazil proposed to “moderate” the text of the document presented by several American countries and which accused the Nicaraguan government of “escalating the repression”, committing serious human rights violations and forcing “hundreds of thousands” into exile. of Nicaraguans” since the social rebellion of 2018.
During the OAS session, the Vatican representative, Monsignor Miroslaw Wachowski, stated that “the crisis in Nicaragua is especially worrisome” since it affects “both individuals and institutions, including Catholics and the Catholic Church.”
He added that a “prominent example” of the crisis is precisely “the unjust imprisonment of Monsignor Rolando Álvarez.”
As part of its confrontation with the Catholic Church, the Ortega government is keeping three other priests in prison and earlier this month ordered the closure of the bank accounts of the Catholic dioceses, because according to the police they are being investigated for alleged money laundering.
In addition to the expulsion of dozens of nuns and priests, Ortega ordered the closure of at least seven radio and television stations linked to the church and last March “suspended” diplomatic relations with the Vatican, following Pope Francis qualified his government as “a rude dictatorship”.
A year earlier, in March 2022, the Nicaraguan government expelled from the country the apostolic nuncio Waldemar Sommertag, who following the 2018 crisis had interceded for various imprisoned opponents.
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