Bishop Álvarez: ‘I always believed in my liberation and what sustained me was prayer’

 

Vatican City, Feb 7, 2025 / 12:20 pm (CNA).

In an exclusive interview, persecuted Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Álvarez, bishop of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of Estelí, shared with EWTN News his experience one year after his release and arrival in Rome.

The Nicaraguan bishop was detained for 17 months in his country, first under house arrest and then in prison, accused by the regime of Daniel Ortega of “conspiracy” and “treason,” among other crimes.

In an interview with EWTN Noticias correspondent Paola Arriaza, Álvarez spoke about his release in Nicaragua in January 2024, which he described as “a supernatural action of God,” his physical and mental recovery, his relationship with Pope Francis, and his participation in the Synod on Synodality.

With an unwavering faith and a message of hope, Álvarez reflected on his past in Nicaragua, his present in the Eternal City, and his continued commitment to the universal Church.

Paola Arriaza: Bishop Rolando Álvarez, you arrived in Rome a year ago. How has your life been here and what tasks has Pope Francis entrusted to you?

Bishop Rolando Álvarez: Well, I am very happy in Rome because when I was detained, I thought that at the time of liberation, after Nicaragua, the best city in which I could live is the eternal one. Precisely because I am close to Peter, and that renews my faith in such a way that I have had a year of recovery, certainly of my integral health, but in which I have also been getting the inner peace that I needed so much.

On the day when you left, you left behind your country, the country where you spent your childhood. Tell us a bit about your childhood in Managua — I don’t know if your vocation to priesthood could be seen from then on.

My childhood was normal. I grew up in the heart of a peasant, working-class, and very Catholic family, with a serious education in the faith, in such a way that my vocation was glimpsed from my childhood because I would pretend to be a priest. Of course I had my girlfriends, but I think that helped me to discern that my path was not marriage. In fact, when I reached a moment of maturity, I wanted to discern well my marriage process, but I did it in reverse, because being in Guatemala I began the path of vocational discernment in the Seminary of the Assumption and there, in that year, I realized that mine was the priesthood, that I was called to the priestly ministry.

How was that moment when you realized that? Or was it just another process?  

It was a process, yes, I always say that I am one of those who come from the street because I did not go through the minor seminary, but after a year, after the discernment process, I was admitted directly to the propaedeutic and then to philosophy, always in the Seminary of the Assumption in Guatemala, because that is where my process of ministerial formation began.

Speaking of your priestly ordination, there is a particularity: The ordination was not in Rome. How did this happen? 

Well, after having done my propaedeutic and philosophy in Guatemala, back in the ’90s, I was transferred to Nicaragua to study at the Interdiocesan Seminary of Our Lady of Fátima, and when I was in my second year of theology, Archbishop-Cardinal [Miguel] Obando called me to tell me that he was sending me to study philosophy in Rome at the Pontifical Gregorian University. So I finished my philosophical specialization and theological formation at the Lateran, being in Rome 30 years ago, and at that time the rector of the John Paul II International Seminary, where I lived, proposed that Pope John Paul II ordain me to the priesthood. But with all the love I have for the saint and to whom I am really very devoted, I chose to be ordained by my bishop in my Archdiocese of Managua, which is the diocese of origin, in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, with my people, with my people and among my own.

Don’t you think that shows a great affection for your people, your country?  

Well, I think I have always had it. I remember an interesting anecdote, and it is that I did not take with me the beautiful vestments that are here in Rome, but I gave them to a Nicaraguan farmer who makes them — he is a professional technician of this — and my vestments are very simple, anti-liturgically I think, because in this the liturgists, listening to me, will criticize me, my sacred vessels were made of wood and I still keep them there. So yes, I have always had this attachment for the cultural, for what is ours, for what is Nicaraguan, for what I am and for the origin where I come from, that one should not forget it.

And your pastoral work as well. I imagine it must have been difficult to leave this pastoral work, to come to Rome. I don’t know if you still do this kind of pastoral work.  

Well, it was difficult for me to leave pastoral work when I was a young man, a boy, and enter the seminary because my life has always been very intense, and I was already the leader of youth pastoral work in the Archdiocese of Managua and so I was very active in the three departments that make up the archdiocese. We had a huge, strong youth structure. For example, in a youth Pentecost Vigil we gathered up to 30,000 young people, a whole night. It was quite a feast of the Holy Spirit. To detach myself from that rhythm of work and take on another one: the academic, the disciplinary, the systematic, the organic at the human level, the pastoral at the spiritual level, at the intellectual level, cost me a little, but with the help of my spiritual directors I was able to channel my energies into my vocational process.

And the same thing will be happening to you here in Rome.

Well, I tell you that it is a little different, because I came to Rome with the illusion of praying, praying and walking the streets being happy. In such a way that I also thought that in the same week of my coming I was going to resign from my diocese of Matagalpa and from the apostolic administration of this mess. I was ready to present my resignation to the pope, but I met with the goodness of God and the Holy Father who wanted me to continue to be the ordinary of Matagalpa and the apostolic administrator of Esteli, even though I was in the diaspora. I don’t call it exile because I am not exiled, I am liberated. I do not feel exiled, but liberated. And in the diaspora. In the diaspora, faith always grows and hope is strengthened.

So that day you came to Rome, what did you feel? What was that day like for you?  

Well, first let me tell you that when I got out of jail and they were taking me to the airport in the steps that the Holy See, the Secretariat of State, on behalf of the Holy Father, made to the government, of course, I felt a deep joy, but above all it was an experience of faith, because at that moment I recited and professed the Creed, which is why I suffered that experience: for my faith in a holy, catholic, and apostolic [Church]. So when I came to Rome, I was very moved, very happy, very enthusiastic, very tearful and very grateful in my heart to God, to the pope, to the Secretariat of State, and to all those men and women who silently managed my departure and to everyone who prayed for me. And I want to take advantage of this interview to thank with my heart all those men and women, not only believers, but also agnostic nonbelievers who wished me well and from that good wish, I am sure, the Lord received those good intentions as a prayer for my liberation.

When you were imprisoned, what was it that kept you hopeful? Did you think that this day of liberation would come? What did you think?

I always thought and believed in my freedom. And in prison I learned two things that can be mistakes: for those who are outside, to think that the prisoner will never get out. That is a serious mistake. And for the prisoner, thinking that he will never get out is another serious mistake. I always believed in my release. When? I don’t know, I didn’t know, but I always hoped to be free and what sustained me was prayer. Now that I am out I have realized that it was not only my prayer but also the prayer of all the faithful and holy people of God, not only Nicaraguan, but spread throughout the world, and it is to the people that I reiterate my deep gratitude and I insist that what sustained me was prayer, to be here with you before the cameras of EWTN, to be able to give this interview in this beautiful Pontifical Commission for Latin America, can only be explained as a supernatural action of God. There is no human explanation for me to be with you at this moment.

You spoke about your state of health on that day you left, during that year you were imprisoned. How was your state of health before and how are you now?  

I came, to put it in a language of quantification, minus zero in all my psychological, psychiatric, emotional, affective, sentimental, moral, spiritual, physical, somatic capacities, minus zero. Now, one year later, I can say that I am 90% recovered.

The people you have left behind, how do you think the Church in Nicaragua is living the current situation?  

I always carry in my pocket, which I don’t have at the moment, what a barbarity, the pastoral letter that the Holy Father addressed to us Nicaraguans on April 2 of last year. And in that pastoral letter the pope exhorts us with a very domestic language and very much our own to believe and trust in divine providence, even in those moments in which we cannot understand what is happening. In other words, even in those moments when hope becomes darkness, we have to firmly believe that God is acting in the history of human beings and in the history of peoples, and I am convinced of that, and that is why I am a man of hope and I believe that my people, my town, are a people of hope.

And do you know what this reminds me of? The Angelus in February 2023, where the pope said he was praying very much for Bishop Rolando Álvarez, and he said: “The bishop, whom I am very fond of.” How did you receive that news?  

Well, I didn’t know about it in prison…. I didn’t know until I came here to Rome, and I don’t feel worthy of the pope’s affection. But I want to tell you a secret that is, I think, why the pope began to be fond of me. Once, in 2018, when there was the most violent situation in Nicaragua, I came to make a visit with the current archbishop, Cardinal [Leopoldo] Brenes, to the Holy See, and we were going to meet with the pope. As a matter of protocol, the archbishop was shown in first and I was left outside for about 20 minutes or half an hour. And I began to pray the holy rosary. After half an hour they showed me in and the pope, in a wonderful gesture, got up, went to receive me, opened his arms to me and said: “Forgive me because I made you go through purgatory waiting for so long.” And I, with my rosary in my hand, said: “Don’t worry, Holy Father, because I took the opportunity to pray the rosary.” It seems to me that there was a moment of sympathy, because from that moment on I remember that the pope always sent me greetings whenever a bishop from Nicaragua came to visit me.

And since then, I imagine that this year in Rome you have had that close relationship?

We have had a close relationship, especially during the synod. A very interesting thing happened to me. I went to lunch near the Vatican, there in a little restaurant, and I finished early. Then I came back at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. The sessions started at 4 o’clock and I thought: I’m going to go and rest at the table. There I’m going to sleep for a while until the work begins. And that synod hall was totally empty. Only the pope was sitting there. I took the opportunity to go and talk to him and there, as we Nicaraguans say, I had a good time because I talked about everything I had to talk about and there the pope told me something that I can’t say.

Speaking of the Synod — that was your first public appearance in which you gave your testimony, and we know that this had a great impact on the members who were there. What did you tell them?

Cardinal Marc [Ouellet] was kind enough to call me personally for 15 days and told me: “The pope wants you to participate in the synod.” I had another plan because I was not ready to participate in the assembly, but well, it was God’s and the pope’s will and I did it with joy and with simplicity and normality. This is how I lived my synodal life. And I always say that I got a license in synodal ecclesiology. That month was very intense for me. I learned a lot from my brother cardinals, bishops, priests, religious, nuns, laypeople. I learned a lot from their speeches, from the conversations in the corridors. One learns a lot at the synod.

Surely you heard another way in which the Church around the world is struggling in its own circumstances to move forward. Did this have an impact on you?  

Well, I think we could all have a different worldview, but there is also a kind of, if I may use a technical expression that I don’t know if I’m going to invent it at this point, a different cosmoecclesiology. There is a way of seeing and living the Church depending on the culture, depending on the continents, depending on the experiences. For example, we have an experience in Nicaragua and Central America where women have an extraordinary participation. I know women who are spiritual directors of bishops, chancellors, promoters of justice, coordinators of communities, delegates of the word, ministers, extraordinary readers of communion, catechists, members of choirs… our churches and our altars are full of boys and girls. On the other hand, I know and I learned during the synod that there are other ecclesial realities in which it seems that women do not have the same participation.

Lastly, Bishop, I wanted to give you the space to say what you would like to your people. Is there any message you want to thank them for?

To tell them that I love them. I love my people very much, I love my town and to tell them that I am a bishop for the universal Church. That is to say, I was ordained bishop for Matagalpa. I am the visible head of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of Estelí and I will continue to be so until God wills it. The day that the Lord, through the pope, does not allow me to continue juridically to pastor this diocese, I will continue to be bishop and pastor of the universal Church. Thank you all. Thank you for the interview, and I want to send from here my blessing from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to all the people of Nicaragua and all Latin America.

Bishop Rolando Álvarez, thank you very much.  

Thank you.