Abelardo Mata, the bishop emeritus of Estelí, Nicaragua, who recently turned 80, was detained for several hours on June 29 by the dictatorships’s police one day after he had celebrated a Mass in which he called for prayers for the persecuted Church in the country.
Around midday on Monday, the prelate was taken into police custody from the clinic to the Investigations Center at the Evaristo Vásquez Sánchez Police Complex, headquarters of the Directorate of Judicial Assistance known as “El Nuevo Chipote,” according to reports by Arnulfo Peralta Solís, a Nicaraguan journalist based in the United States.
El Nuevo Chipote is where political dissidents have been imprisoned and allegedly tortured.
Peralta further stated that on that same day, Mata returned to his home in the town of Tisma. The journalist had spoken with the bishop on May 18 during the latterʼs first public appearance in years as he congratulated an Indigenous Nicaraguan doctor working in Denver.
According to the newspaper La Prensa, Mata arrived in Estelí on Thursday, June 25, and his detention took place following a Mass he celebrated on Sunday, June 28, at the Calvary’s Cross church, where the bishop “asked for prayers for the persecuted Church and prayed for exiled priests, including Bishop Rolando Álvarez and Father Frutos Constantino Valle Salmerón.”
According to the Nicaraguan newspaper, Mata is reportedly barred by authorities from traveling to Estelí and celebrating Mass there.
The Nicaraguan media Mosaico CSI reported that the prelate had visited a clinic in Estelí for a checkup, as he uses a pacemaker.
Álvarez, who serves as apostolic administrator of Estelí since Mata resigned in 2021, currently lives in Rome. He was exiled there in January 2024 after serving about 11 months of a 26-year prison sentence, not counting the approximately seven months he was held under house arrest prior. The prelate was a consistent critic of the dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo.
Valle, who is over 80 years old, holds the position of “administrator ad omnia” for Estelí, meaning he can carry out all ordinary functions of pastoral governance except those reserved to a bishop. Valle is currently living at the Our Lady of Fatima Seminary and is under house arrest, prohibited from leaving the seminary.
“Bishop Emeritus Juan Abelardo Mata has been a bishop close to the people who has spoken the truth, actions that the Sandinista dictatorship does not tolerate,” researcher Martha Patricia Molina stated on June 30 in comments to ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News.
Molina, the author of the report “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church,” which has documented thousands of attacks by the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship against Catholics since 2018, noted 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 explained.
In April, a priest in Nicaragua speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons gave an interview to ACI Prensa to denounce the harassment he faces on a daily basis.
Every Sunday, the police arrive to photograph him. He is required to report every time he leaves his parish, every religious service, and every movement outside his territory. If he speaks about a social issue during his homily, he risks one of two things: imprisonment or exile.
Mata is ‘courageous, beloved, and credible voice in Nicaragua’
“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,” Arturo McFields, Nicaragua’s former ambassador to the Organization of American States, told 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,” he 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.”
McFields also charged that the dictatorship “harbors a deep-seated grudge against Bishop Mata and is intent on ‘settling scores.’”
Bishop Báez condemns attack on Mata
“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,” Bishop Silvio Báez, auxiliary bishop of Managua, currently in exile in Miami, wrote on X.
“These cowardly actions only demonstrate the weakness and irrationality of a criminal dictatorship,” the prelate stated on June 30.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.
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