Nicaragua bishop reportedly detained twice as whereabouts remain unknown

Eighty-year-old Bishop Emeritus Juan Abelardo Mata of Estelí, Nicaragua — a longtime critic of the government led by President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo — was reportedly detained this week by Nicaraguan authorities and later released, according to independent Nicaraguan media. Reports later claimed police again took the bishop into custody and his whereabouts remain unknown. 

The Ortega-Murillo government has intensified repression against the Catholic Church in recent years, including through the imprisonment and exile of other bishops, such as Bishop Rolando Álvarez.

Bishop Mata celebrated Mass on June 28 at the Church of the Cross of Calvary in Estelí, according to a source close to him cited by the newspaper La Prensa, 100% Noticias reported. During the Mass, the bishop prayed for Nicaragua's persecuted Church and exiled clergy, naming Bishop Álvarez and Father Frutos Constantino Valle Salmerón.

Paramilitaries attended the Mass, photographing Bishop Mata during his homily and photographing congregants who approached to greet him, according to Martha Patricia Molina, a Nicaraguan lawyer and researcher on the persecuted Church.

Hooded police officers detained Bishop Mata on June 29, removing him from a private clinic in Estelí where he was receiving medical treatment, Mosaico CSI reported. He was transferred to the Directorate of Judicial Assistance in Managua — a facility Mosaico CSI identified as El Chipote, which it described as a police torture prison, where he was interrogated for several hours.

Molina wrote on X that Bishop Mata and an aide were released hours later on what she called “conditional freedom.” Police returned him to his home in Tisma, Masaya, under what authorities described as house arrest, Articulo 66 reported. 

Molina separately confirmed the release to 100% Noticias, saying Bishop Mata remained "under surveillance, threats and siege." 

Bishop Silvio José Báez, who has lived in exile since 2019 after Pope Francis asked him to leave Nicaragua amid credible death threats against him from the Ortega government, condemned the detention in a statement posted to X, calling it “cowardly actions” that show “the weakness and irrationality of a criminal dictatorship.”

Second reported detainment 

Police kidnapped and detained Bishop Mata again on June 30 and his whereabouts have not been publicly disclosed since, according to Articulo 66 and Mosaico CSI. 

Journalist Emiliano Chamorro reported June 30 on X that an unnamed source said dozens of police returned to Bishop Mata's home in Tisma and forcibly removed him and his secretary around midnight. 

According to Chamorro, police also seized property at the home. The source said, "Now we are very worried about Monsignor Mata, they took him away at midnight and we don't know his whereabouts." 

Police also arrested Father Francisco Morales, the parish priest of La Cruz del Calvario, and the church's deacon, Wilfred Aráuz Rodríguez, on the same day, Articulo 66 and Molina reported. The Facebook news page El Punto reported that police also took a former secretary of the bishop's and her children into custody, releasing them hours later.

The deacon was later released, on condition that he remain silent, while Father Morales' whereabouts, like Bishop Mata's, remain unknown. 

Molina wrote that the last time one of the two men was seen, he was “in the hands of the criminal police of the bloody Ortega-Murillo dictatorship,” adding that  “the dictatorship makes it clear that no one should speak out.”

Neither Nicaragua's National Police nor other government institutions or the Diocese of Estelí had issued official comment on Bishop Mata's detention as of time of publication.