(LifeSiteNews) — Nicaraguan police arrested an 80-year-old Catholic bishop after he publicly asked for prayers for the persecuted Church in the country.
Abelardo Mata, bishop emeritus of Estelí, was arrested and detained for several hours on June 29 by police, one day after he celebrated a Mass where he asked for prayers for the “persecuted Church” in Nicaragua.
He was taken into custody around midday on Monday while he was at a clinic in Estelí for a checkup because he has a pacemaker. He was taken to the Investigations Center at the Evaristo Vásquez Sánchez Police Complex, where he was detained for several hours.
The day before, on Sunday, June 28, Mata had given a homily during Holy Mass at the Calvary’s Cross church in which the bishop “asked for prayers for the persecuted Church and prayed for exiled priests, including Bishop Rolando Álvarez and Father Frutos Constantino Valle Salmerón.”
Mata has now reportedly been barred from traveling to Estelí and celebrating Mass there.
Bishop Álvarez, whom Mata mentioned in his sermon, has served as apostolic administrator of Estelí since Mata resigned in 2021 and currently lives in Rome. He was exiled in 2024 after serving 11 months of his 26-year prison sentence, which he received for his consistent criticism of the country’s dictator, Daniel Ortega, and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo.
Fr. Valle, who is now over 80 years old, is the “administrator ad omnia” for Estelí and is currently living under house arrest at the Our Lady of Fatima Seminary.
Researcher Martha Patricia Molina, who authored the report “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church,” which documents the attacks of the Ortega government against Catholics since 2018, said that “in Nicaragua, anyone who dares to voice an opinion, however obvious it may seem, ends up offending the dictatorship and that’s why they keep the prelates under surveillance.”
“They are constantly threatened with imprisonment or exile, and while not all cases become public, several priests are enduring this same constant harassment without reporting it publicly, because the dictatorship reacts more harshly when they do,” Molina stated.
“Bishop Mata has been a strong, courageous voice that has always spoken truth to power, and that truth and light are unsettling. He is a beloved and credible voice in Nicaragua,” said Arturo McFields, Nicaragua’s former ambassador to the Organization of American States, in an interview with ACI Prensa.
“The dictatorship tends to want to normalize what is happening in the country, and what has happened to Bishop Mata shows us that there is nothing normal in Nicaragua,” McFields said. “There is a spiteful, dangerous, criminal, and satanic dictatorship, and this must be denounced because it is the only way to put a stop to these actions, especially against any voice that dares to question the regime.”
Bishop Silvio Báez, auxiliary bishop of Managua who is currently in exile in Miami, wrote on X: “I am deeply outraged by and absolutely condemn the act of aggression committed by the regime’s police against my brother Juan Abelardo Mata, bishop emeritus of Estelí.”
“These cowardly actions only demonstrate the weakness and irrationality of a criminal dictatorship,” Báez stated.