The Venezuelan Episcopal Conference (CEV) expressed solidarity this Wednesday with the Nicaraguan Church in “these moments of difficulties that are living”, which follows with “careful concern”, due to the expulsion and imprisonment of religious from the Central American country.
Through a statement, the Venezuelan bishops, together with their presbyteries, expressed their concern about the “latest events that are marking the life and ministry” of the Church “in the sister nation of Nicaragua”, among them “the expulsion of priests, deacons, seminarians and religious“, Besides of “trial and prison of dear brother Rolando Álvarez”.
Álvarez, bishop of the Nicaraguan town of Matagalpa and critic of the Daniel Ortega regime, was sentenced last Friday to 26 years and 4 months in prison after being convicted of crimes considered “treason.”
The sentence against the bishop was handed down a day after he refused to get on the plane that would take him, along with 222 other Nicaraguan prisoners, to the United States, which provoked the fury of Ortega, who described him as “arrogant”, “insane”. and “energize me”.
The Venezuelan Episcopate, according to the pronouncement, requests “to God (that) change the hearts of those who have made those decisionsso that, in addition to reconsidering and converting, they understand that, by divine mandate, the Church will always be faithful to the prophetic mission of announcing the word of liberation walking together with its people”.
“We implore the Most Pure Virgin, Mother of God, venerated among us as María de Coromoto, her maternal protection for all of Nicaragua.”, expressed the CEV.
The Nicaraguan regime expelled the Italian priest on Tuesday Cosimo Damiano Muratoriwhom he accuses of having intervened “injuriously in matters only concerning Nicaraguans.”
The Central American country has been going through a political and social crisis since April 2018, which worsened after the controversial general elections of November 7, 2021, in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term.
(With information from EFE)
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