Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Alvarez, who was sentenced to more than 26 years in prison for “treason” and released for several hours by the government led by Daniel Ortega, has been returned to prison after refusing to leave Nicaragua, he said Wednesday. EFE diplomatic source.

However, Nicaraguan Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes denied that Alvarez, Bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa and Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Esteli in northern Nicaragua, had been released by the Nicaraguan authorities.

“This is pure speculation,” Brenes, also the archbishop of Managua, said in statements broadcast to radio station La Corporación.

According to the Nicaraguan cardinal, Bishop Alvarez is still being held in the National Penitentiary System, a maximum security prison in Nicaragua known as “La Modelo”.

“He’s here,” said the archbishop, who clarified that he had not spoken to Alvarez personally.

DIPLOMATIC VERSION

A diplomatic source told EFE that Bishop Alvarez has been released since Monday evening and has since been protected by the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference in Managua.

His release, according to this source, was due to negotiations between the Nicaraguan government, the Vatican and the episcopate, which later discussed the fate of a high-ranking official.

The possibility of sending Bishop Alvarez to Rome or exile or return to prison if he refusedwhich eventually happened.

“It looks like the talks didn’t go well and the case has returned to La Modelo,” the source said.

Bishop Alvarez would once again refuse to leave Nicaragua, as demanded by the Ortega government, “if it had not been ordered by Pope Francis,” he explained.

According to the source, the decision of the Nicaraguan bishop, who has been imprisoned at La Modelo since February 9 after refusing to be deported to the US, is to stay in his country.

“Monsignor Rolando Alvarez does not want to leave Nicaragua. He wants to be free, without conditions, in his own country.” Honduran Bishop José Antonio Canales, who has been following his colleague’s situation, wrote on his social media.

DID LULA INTERVENE?

News of the situation with the Nicaraguan Catholic leader comes two weeks after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced in Rome after meeting with Pope Francis that he would try convince Ortega to release Bishop Alvarez.

Lula then explained that the only thing the Catholic Church in Nicaragua wanted was the release of Bishop Alvarez so he could travel to Italy and called Ortega’s imprisonment a “mistake”.

“I will talk to Ortega so that they give him freedom, because it is necessary to learn to ask for forgiveness (…) and admit this mistake,” Lula, who met with Pope Francis in the Vatican for 45 minutes, said then.