Last Saturday, dressed in blue and thin, the bishop of Matagalpa chatted with two of his brothers during a meal in prison.
Photo: Screenshot from YouTube Channel 4 Nicaragua
Newsroom (04/02/2023 20:44, Gaudium Press) As relaxed as the scene may seem, it is impossible to hide the tragedy: that of a bishop unjustly imprisoned by a dictatorship that creates an artificially decorated scenario too – through a media outlet linked to the regime – try to clean up its image before a world that pressures and demands the prelate’s release.
Last Saturday, a video was released of Bishop Rolando Álvarez, Bishop of Matagalpa, imprisoned by Ortega’s dictatorship since August 19 of last year, when in the early morning hours they removed him from the Curia of Matagalpa and took him to Managua. At the time, he was placed under house arrest. Last February 10, after refusing to be deported to the US, he was sentenced – in an express trial – to more than 26 years in prison for non-existent crimes, based on the classifications of a persecutory penal code characteristic of communist regimes. Don Alvarez is in the ‘Modelo prison in Managua.
The video
Now appears this video, filmed last Saturday, the day of the Annunciation, with as the protagonist a thin successor of the apostles, dressed in blue like the criminals. Bishop Álvarez knows that he is not alone in talking to his two brothers, who have been allowed to visit him and are constantly looking at those behind the cameras and at the cameras. He knows that he is an increasingly uncomfortable ‘trophy’ for a decaying regime.
– Are they his relatives?” asks a very ‘perceptive’ voice behind the cameras (as if he didn’t know, just for the record…), to which the bishop replies with a smile and a simple “yes”, and the questioner replies with a laconic “well”. The bishop’s brother and sister do not smile, they cannot hide the tension of the moment.
At a certain point, the Bishop leaves the ‘set’ and returns to answer a journalist who asks how he is: “Thank God, fine, with much inner strength, with much peace in the Lord and the Blessed Virgin.
– How was this family meeting?
– Thank God well, thank God well. We talked, and we ate a very tasty meal that our friends from the penitentiary system gave us, with affection and kindness.
The bishop continues by saying that he has received dignified treatment and thanks the competent authorities for this.
The journalist tells him that he looks fine, and the Bishop asks “and how do you see my face?” Behind the prelate’s imperturbable smile, his suffering is evident.
Urged on by the journalist who asks him for a few last words, the persecuted Bishop of Matagalpa thanks the Virgin on the day of the Annunciation – She who “with her ‘yes [allowed] the Word to become flesh and dwell among us” – that he was allowed to share with his brothers.
After these words, the bishop returns to the table with his brothers. The Bishop’s sister exchanges a few imperceptible words with him, while he already shows all the natural seriousness of a countenance that faces injustice and tragedy with faith.
Of course, what appears in the video does not reveal the real conditions in which Bishop Álvarez is kept by his jailers. That will only be known when he is released.
Even with the staging, and perhaps added to by it, the Bishop of Matagalpa becomes more and more a symbol of all the persecution suffered by the Church in Nicaragua. (SCM)
Compiled by Dominic Joseph
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