The release of a political prisoner anywhere is cause for celebration. And yet relief that Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Álvarez’s wrongful imprisonment has ended must come with a caveat: It was only achieved at the expense of forced expatriation. On Jan. 14, Bishop Álvarez, along with 18 other Catholic political prisoners — Bishop Isidoro Mora, 15 priests and two seminarians — left Nicaragua and flew to Rome. The freedom-for-exile deal had been worked out between the Vatican and Nicaragua’s dictator, Daniel Ortega, who has been at war with his country’s church ever since it lent support to popular protests in 2018, denounced his regime’s human rights violations and attempted to broker a peaceful transition to democracy.
Bishop Álvarez represented a particularly courageous challenge to the regime. He had been a political prisoner since August 2022, having been convicted and sentenced to 26 years on such spurious charges as “undermining national integrity” and “propagation of false news.” In February 2023, he balked at joining 222 other Nicaraguan political prisoners who were expelled to the United States in a deal facilitated by the Biden administration. According to the Pillar, a U.S.-based news outlet that focuses on Catholic issues, regime officials presented the bishop with a blank sheet of paper at the time the others were being readied for expulsion and told him to sign. He refused, suspecting it was a trick to create a false confession. More recently, suffering from health problems, he agreed to leave the country.
The latest prisoner releases culminate Mr. Ortega’s systematic attempt to cripple and subjugate the Nicaraguan church, in a manner similar to the strategy Fidel Castro employed against the Cuban church beginning in 1961. According to three United Nations special rapporteurs, the regime has stripped 310 nongovernmental organizations associated with the Catholic Church of their rights to operate since 2022. It has decreed the closure of at least 12 church media outlets. In August, the government revoked the legal status of the Jesuit-run Central American University and seized the campus. The Vatican closed its embassy in Nicaragua last spring after the government proposed suspending relations. Priests say they’re routinely spied on and harassed. More than 100 Catholic priests have fled, been kicked out of the country, or denied reentry. In October, the government freed 12 other Catholic priests from prison and sent them to Rome, again under a deal with the Vatican.
Pope Francis’s response to all of this has been disappointingly passive. On New Year’s Day he said he was praying for Nicaragua and “following with concern” events there in which “bishops and priests have been deprived of their freedom.” The Vatican should protest loudly, but has been cautious, probably out of fear that strong public criticism will only make matters worse for the remaining clergy. The Pope’s timidity will probably be repaid with more repression as indeed it has been already.