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Police put Nicaraguan bishop under house arrest again, send priests and seminarians to jail 

August 19, 2022 Catholic News Agency 1
Bishop Rolando José Álvarez of the Diocese of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, was placed under house arrest by the police of Daniel Ortega’s regime in early August 2022. / Photo credit: Diocese of Matagalpa

Matagalpa, Nicaragua, Aug 19, 2022 / 12:52 pm (CNA).

The Nicaraguan national police said that the kidnapping of Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa, this morning was carried out to “recover normality for the residents and families of Matagalpa.”

In a statement released this morning, the police, who serve the regime of President Daniel Ortega, justified their break-in just after 3 a.m. at the bishop’s residence in Matagalpa, saying the bishop would have continued with “destabilizing and provocative activities.”

Since Aug. 4, Álvarez and a group of priests, seminarians, and lay people have been prevented by the police from leaving the house and communicating with the outside world. The police insisted that they had “for several days waited with great patience, prudence, and a sense of responsibility for a communication positive from the Bishopric of Matagalpa, which never came to pass.”

According to the police statement, the bishop of Matagalpa and the other eight people who remained with him inside the bishop’s residence “were transferred, with respect and observance of their rights,” to Managua for legal inquiries.

The bishop “remains in house protection (sic) in this capital city and has been able to meet with his relatives this morning,” the statement said.

The Nicaragua police also said that the Archbishop of Managua and vice president of the Nicaraguan Bishops Conference, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes, visited Álvarez this morning “and both have talked extensively.”

According to the police, the Matagalpa vicar, Monsignor Oscar Escoto, remains in the bishop’s residence “without any police or mobility restrictions.”

The Archdiocese of Managua has not yet issued an official statement on the meeting between Brenes and Álvarez.

The Ortega dictatorship “is capable of anything”

In statements to ACI Prensa, Nicaraguan lawyer Martha Patricia Molina Montenegro, a member of the Pro-Transparency and Anti-Corruption Observatory, said that the Ortega dictatorship “is capable of anything” and “will always generate as much damage as possible.”

The jurist underscored the arbitrariness of the National Police’s incursion into the episcopal house of Matagalpa, pointing out that it violates the Constitution and the Code of Criminal Procedure, which establish limitations on house arrest and home invasion. Ordinarily, it can only be done “between six in the morning and six in the evening,” according to Montenegro. 

She also stressed that the bishop, priests, seminarians, and lay people who were surrounded by the police since Aug. 4 “spent 15 days kidnapped, not detained.”

“The police are acting like a criminal group that does not submit to the rule of law and once again it makes clear that Nicaragua is a dictatorship where they proceed according to the whim and state of mind of President Daniel Ortega and his consort,” she said. Ortega’s wife, Rosario Murillo, has held the position of Vice President of Nicaragua, since January 2017.

The lawyer explained to ACI Prensa that “the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship proceeds arbitrarily because it knows that if it uses legal channels it would not have any legal basis, because all the crimes that are attributed to innocent citizens are false.”

“Ortega fears no one”

Montenegro, the author of a report that indicates more than 190 attacks have occurred against the Catholic Church since 2018 under the shadow of the Ortega dictatorship, pointed out that “Ortega fears no one.”

“This has been demonstrated by escalating the intensity of the repression,” she said. 

The jurist recalled that the Ortega dictatorship “has ordered the assassination of more than 350 Nicaraguans,” referring to those killed to repress the peaceful protests of 2018, and noted that the regime has “sent into exile more than 200,000” in addition to taking “190 political prisoners.”

In the last week, the regime closed all media outlets, prompting international backlash. Montenegro voiced her skepticism about the backlash, however, noting that though the international community condemns Ortega, “they continue to finance him by granting him millionaire loans, which are used to repress and not to invest in social works.”

“The victory will be given by the Lord”

Still, Montenegro has reason to hope while events unfold.

“I can assure you that this arbitrariness and attacks on the Church have united us more as Christians,” she said, noting that “yesterday we were more than 3,500 families praying the Holy Rosary in the company of Bishop Rolando, through social media and thousands more who connected from other places.”

“We are strengthened with that peace and tranquility that only the Holy Spirit provides,” she continued.

“There is no human power that can put an end to this nefarious and criminal dictatorship. Victory will be given by the Lord.” 

The last post on the bishop’s Twitter account, shortly before he was kidnapped by the National Police, recalled the Gospel: “Let us worry about wearing festive garments in the Kingdom of God.”

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News Briefs

Cardinal Ouellet named in Canadian sex abuse lawsuit

August 16, 2022 Catholic News Agency 4
Cardinal Marc Ouellet takes part in the Pontifical Council for Culture’s Plenary Assembly on Women’s Cultures in Rome, Feb. 6, 2015. / Bohumil Petrik/CNA.

Denver Newsroom, Aug 16, 2022 / 16:04 pm (CNA).

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, was accused of sexual assault in a civil suit filed against the Archdiocese of Quebec.

AFP reported that the class action suit, filed Aug. 16, includes the testimony of 101 people who say they were sexually assaulted by clerics or Church staff from 1940 to the present. Eighty-eight clerics face accusations in the suit.

Ouellet is accused by a woman who says that he assaulted her multiple times while she worked as a pastoral intern for the Quebec archdiocese between 2008 and 2010, while he was Archbishop of Quebec. She described him kissing her and sliding his hand down her back to her buttock.

According to the CBC, the alleged incidents involving Ouellet occurred at public events.

The suit says that the alleged victim wrote to Pope Francis about Ouellet in January 2021, and she received an email Feb. 23, 2021 had appointed Father Jacques Servais to investigate the cardinal. Her last communication with Servais was the following month, and as of now “no conclusion concerning the complaints against Cardinal Marc Ouellet has been sent” to her.

Another class action suit was filed against the Brothers of the Christian Schools. In that case, 193 alleged victims have accused 116 De La Salle Brothers of sexual assault.

Ouellet, 78, was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Amos in 1968, at age 23. He joined the Sulpicians in 1972. In 2001 he was appointed secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and consecrated a bishop.

He served as Archbishop of Quebec from 2002 to 2010, when he was appointed prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

Ouellet has been outspoken about sex abuse, and priestly formation.

At a 2018 meeting of the Presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe, he said that “We would need participation of more women in (training) of priests” to prevent abuse.

He reiterated this point in a 2020 interview with Donne Chiesa Mondo, saying, “for the priest, learning to relate to women in the context of formation is a humanizing factor which promotes the balance of man’s personality and affectivity.”

The cardinal said he thought the Church would benefit greatly from an increased presence of women on seminary formation teams, as theology, philosophy, and spirituality teachers, and “in particular in vocational discernment.”

Ouellet verbally sparred with Archbishop Vigano as details of Vatican knowledge of Theodore McCarrick emerged in recent years. 

In an October 2018 letter, Ouellet said it was communicated to Vigano in 2011 that McCarrick “had to obey certain conditions and restrictions because of rumors about his behavior in the past,” and that he “was strongly urged not to travel and not to appear in public, in order not to provoke further rumours about him. It is false to present the measures taken against him as ‘sanctions’ decreed by Pope Benedict XVI and annulled by Pope Francis.”

And in January 2019, Ouellet wrote that his congregation had blocked the U.S. bishops from voting on proposals to address the sex abuse crisis in November because it believed more time was needed to discuss the measures.

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