Retired Nicaraguan bishop detained after Mass, hospital visit
Eighty-year-old Bishop Abelardo Mata was detained after offering Mass in his former diocese.
The Nicaraguan dictatorship detained and released a retired bishop Jun. 29 after a hospital visit.
Eighty-year-old Bishop Abelardo Mata, SDB, emeritus Bishop of Estelí, was held in police custody for several hours on Monday after celebrating Mass in his former diocese, during which he asked the faithful to pray for the persecuted Church in Nicaragua and for Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who has lived in exile in Rome since 2024 after spending more than a year in prison on conspiracy charges.
Mata was taken from a hospital, where he was undergoing a checkup related to his pacemaker, and brought to a regime prison, where he was held for several hours.
Local outlet La Prensa reported that the regime had barred Mata from returning to his diocese and celebrating Mass there, but that the retired bishop defied the ban, arriving in Estelí on Thursday, June 25, and celebrating Mass publicly on Sunday, June 28.
According to La Prensa, Mata asked for prayers for the “persecuted Church in Nicaragua, for Bishop Rolando Álvarez and Fr. Frutos Valle Salmerón” during Mass.
Fr. Frutos Valle Salmerón was appointed diocesan administrator in Estelí in 2022 after the imprisonment of Bishop Álvarez, who also served as the diocese’s apostolic administrator.
Valle Salmerón was then arrested and placed under house arrest at a local seminary in July 2024 after the Diocese of Estelí announced the ordination of three new priests, which regime authorities claimed had not been authorized by them.
A local source told La Prensa that several people had been arrested and interrogated alongside Mata on Monday.
Local outlet Mosaico CSI also reported that Mata was taken to El Chipote, a Nicaraguan torture center in which several priests have been imprisoned. There, he was warned against returning to Estelí and celebrating Mass publicly. Afterwards, the police took him home.
Mata served as the Bishop of Estelí between 1988 and 2021. He is well known for his opposition to the Nicaraguan regime, especially during the 2018 protests in the country. In July 2018, the bishop’s car was shot by members of a paramilitary group connected to the Nicaraguan regime as he was travelling to Managua, the country’s capital.
Nicaragua, a country of around 7 million people bordering Honduras and Costa Rica, is led by an authoritarian regime that dates back to 2007, when Sandinista Front leader Daniel Ortega, who served as president from 1979 to 1990, returned to power. The regime launched a crackdown on the Church following mass protests in 2018.
Since the start of the persecution against the Catholic Church, the Nicaraguan regime has forced the closure of dozens of Catholic TV and radio stations, the dissolution of the legal structures of religious congregations, Catholic universities, and Catholic foundations, and the seizure of their properties.
Several religious orders have been forced to leave the country, including the Jesuits, the Franciscans, the Missionaries of Charity, the Poor Clares, the Discalced Carmelites, and the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.
More than 250 clergy and religious have been forced into exile, including four bishops and almost one-fifth of the country’s priests.
The Diocese of Matagalpa has been hit particularly hard, losing over 60% of its clergy, including its bishop and most of its diocesan curia. The regime also seized the local seminary in 2025.
The embattled diocese was home to Bishop Rolando Álvarez, widely seen as one of the most stringent critics of Ortega. His criticism of the regime led to his arrest in August 2022, and his subsequent 25-year prison sentence on charges of conspiracy.
On November 12, 2024, the president of the Nicaraguan bishops’ conference, Bishop Carlos Herrera, OFM, was forced into exile after criticizing a pro-regime mayor during Sunday Mass in the Jinotega cathedral.
After beginning his prison sentence, Álvarez was exiled to Rome in January 2024 and has lived there ever since. Bishop Isidoro Mora of the Diocese of Siuna, who was detained after he mentioned Álvarez in a homily in December 2023, has also been in exile since January 2024.
Bishop Silvio Báez, OCD, auxiliary bishop of Managua, has been in exile since 2019, first in Rome and then in the United States, after receiving death threats from the Nicaraguan regime.