The EWTN News portal (via its Spanish-language service ACI Prensa) reports that the Nicaraguan dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has released a nine-minute video showing “Bishop” Abelardo Mata, “bishop emeritus of Estelí,” who had been missing since late June. In the footage, recorded at an unknown date, the 80-year-old prelate appears alongside pro-government legislator Adolfo Pastrán, discussing his “monastic life” of prayer, study, and tending crops at an estate in Tisma. Critics, including “Fr.” Edwing Román of Miami and former Nicaraguan ambassador Arturo McFields, denounce the video as staged propaganda, noting Mata remains under house arrest and incommunicado, a replay of the regime’s tactics with “Bishop” Rolando Álvarez. The article concludes with a call for a day of prayer, “Masses,” and the “thousand Hail Marys” on the occasion of Mata’s “golden jubilee of priesthood” (ordained 1976). This spectacle exposes not the persecution of the Church, but the sordid collaboration between a Masonic-communist dictatorship and the conciliar sect occupying the Vatican, each exploiting the other to legitimize their anti-Catholic rule.
The Conciliar ‘Hierarchy’ as Political Pawns of Secular Powers
The entire narrative presented by the conciliar media outlet ACI Prensa rests on a fundamental lie: that the man in the video is a Catholic bishop and that his detention constitutes “religious persecution” of the Church. From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine, Abelardo Mata is not a bishop, nor is the structure he represents the Catholic Church. Ordained in 1976 under the invalid Pauline rite of “priestly ordination” (promulgated by the antipope Paul VI in 1968), and consecrated a “bishop” in 1990 under the equally invalid 1968 rite of episcopal consecration, Mata possesses no sacramental character, no jurisdiction, and no mission from Christ. He is a layman clad in purple, a functionary of the ecclesia novus ordo — the conciliar sect — which has usurped the visible structures of the Church since the usurpation of the See of Peter by the Modernist Angelo Roncalli (John XXIII) in 1958.
The article’s language — “bishop emeritus,” “Diocese of Estelí,” “Nicaraguan Bishops’ Conference,” “priesthood,” “Masses” — is a deliberate semantic fraud. As Pope Pius XII taught in Mystici Corporis Christi (1943), the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, not a human institution subject to political theater. The conciliar sect, by contrast, is a societas humana, a purely naturalistic entity organized along Masonic lines, as St. Pius X condemned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907): the Modernists “lay the axe to the root” by transforming the Church into a “religious society” adapted to the world. The video released by the Sandinista regime — a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship historically allied with Soviet Communism and international Freemasonry — parading a “bishop” of this sect is not persecution; it is a staged dialectic between two wings of the same Masonic revolution. The regime gains a veneer of “religious tolerance” for international consumption; the conciliar sect gains “martyr” credentials to legitimize its false hierarchy before a duped laity.
Invalid Orders and Simulated Sacraments: The Ontological Nullity of the Nicaraguan ‘Church’
The call for “Masses” and the “rosary” for Mata’s “freedom” and “well-being” compounds the sacrilege. The “Mass” celebrated in the conciliar rite (Novus Ordo Missae, 1969) is not the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary but a Protestantized memorial meal, stripped of the propitiatory nature defined by the Council of Trent (Sess. XXII, can. 1-3). As the Bull Quo Primum (1570) of St. Pius V and the perennial Magisterium teach, the Canon Missae is the heart of the Sacrifice; its mutilation by the Consilium of Bugnini (a suspected Freemason) renders the rite invalid ex defectu formae. Consequently, the “priests” and “bishops” of the conciliar sect offer no Sacrifice, confect no Eucharist, and absolve no sins. Their “Communion” is bread; their “absolution” is null.
The article mentions Mata’s “golden jubilee of priesthood” (1976). This is a celebration of a null ordination. The 1968 rite of Paul VI omitted the essential form for the sacerdotium — “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum… cuius peccata remiseris” — replacing it with a vague invocation of “presbyteral grace.” Leo XIII in Apostolicae Curae (1896) declared Anglican orders “absolutely null and utterly void” for defect of form and intention; the same judgment applies a fortiori to the Pauline rite, which explicitly removed the language of propitiatory sacrifice. Mata has never been a priest, never a bishop. He is a layman administering a counterfeit religion.
The “thousand Hail Marys” requested by the exile group is a pious exercise directed toward a false end: the “freedom” of a false bishop within a false church. Supernaturalis gratia non datur extra Ecclesiam (grace is not given outside the Church). The true Church, the Ecclesia Catholica of the ages, subsists in the remnant of bishops and priests retaining valid orders (pre-1968) and the integral faith, who reject the conciliar sect as the abominatio desolationis foretold by Daniel (9:27) and Our Lord (Matt. 24:15). To pray for the “success” of the conciliar sect’s political maneuvers is to pray for the consolidation of the Great Apostasy.
Naturalistic Framing: The Erasure of the Supernatural Order
The article’s rhetoric is entirely naturalistic. It speaks of “human rights,” “arbitrary detention,” “pressure from the United States,” “proof of life,” “exile in Rome,” “religious persecution” — categories of secular liberalism, not Catholic theology. Not a single word is said about the state of grace, the salvation of souls, the necessity of the true Sacraments, the Four Last Things, or the Kingship of Christ over nations. This silence is the gravest accusation. As Pius XI thundered in Quas Primas (1925), provided in the context: “When God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed, because the main reason why some have the right to command and others have the duty to obey was removed.” The conciliar “bishop” Mata, in the video, speaks of “prayer,” “silence,” “study,” “monastic life” — but never of the Social Reign of Christ the King, never of the duty of the Nicaraguan state to profess the Catholic Faith officially, never of the condemnation of Communism and Freemasonry by Pius IX (Quanta Cura, Syllabus, 1864), Leo XIII (Humanum Genus, 1884), St. Pius X (Pascendi), Pius XI (Divini Redemptoris, 1937), and Pius XII.
The “Fr.” Edwing Román calls the regime’s actions “harassment the Church in Nicaragua is facing.” Which Church? The conciliar sect in Nicaragua has for decades implemented the Masonic program of “liberation theology,” “base communities,” and political activism, effectively serving as the religious arm of the Sandinista revolution in the 1980s. The current conflict is a falling-out among thieves: the dictatorship no longer needs the conciliar hierarchy’s collaboration now that it has consolidated totalitarian control, and the hierarchy, stripped of its revolutionary utility, feigns persecution to regain relevance. The “bishop” Mata, described as a “critical voice… deeply attuned to the suffering of the Nicaraguan people,” epitomizes the horizontalist clergy condemned by Pius XII in Menti Nostrae (1950): priests who “neglect the supernatural end of their ministry” to become “social workers.”
Two Anti-Christs: The Sandinista Dictatorship and the Conciliar Sect
The former ambassador McFields observes the regime “repeated the same script they used with Bishop Rolando Álvarez.” Álvarez, the “bishop of Matagalpa,” was the conciliar sect’s poster boy for “resistance,” imprisoned then exiled to Rome — where he resides comfortably in the Vatican’s guesthouse, a guest of the antipope Francis (Bergoglio) and now Leo XIV (Prevost). This “script” is a classic strategia tensionis: create a crisis, stage a confrontation, then “resolve” it to the advantage of both parties. The Sandinistas, heirs of the Masonic-Communist tradition of Augusto César Sandino (a Freemason), consolidate internal control; the conciliar sect, the Church of the New Advent, harvests “martyr” narratives to mask its apostasy and solicit funds from the faithful in the North.
The article notes the “United States” demanded Mata’s “immediate and unconditional release.” The U.S. government, a Masonic republic founded on Enlightenment naturalism (condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus, errors 3, 4, 55, 77, 80), has no authority in matters of the Faith. Its intervention is purely geopolitical: using “religious freedom” as a cudgel against a rival socialist regime. The conciliar sect welcomes this pressure, having embraced Dignitatis Humanae (Vatican II, 1965) — the heretical declaration on “religious liberty” condemned by the entire pre-conciliar Magisterium (Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos; Pius IX, Quanta Cura; Leo XIII, Immortale Dei; St. Pius X, Vehementer Nos). By invoking “U.S. pressure,” the article reveals the conciliar sect’s true master: the Masonic world order, not Christ the King.
The Propaganda Function of Conciliar Media: Legitimizing the Usurpation
ACI Prensa / EWTN News is the media arm of the conciliar sect, founded by the “Fr.” Maciel (a proven predator and fraud) and sustained by the “Legionaries of Christ,” a congregation riddled with corruption and Modernism. Its reporting serves one purpose: to maintain the illusion that the conciliar hierarchy is the Catholic Church. By framing the Sandinista video as “propaganda” against a “bishop,” the outlet manipulates conservative Catholics into defending a false prelate, a false church, and a false narrative of persecution. The faithful are directed to offer “Masses” (invalid) and prayers for a man who is not a bishop, in a sect that is not the Church, for a “freedom” that means only the liberty to spread Modernism.
The author, Walter Sánchez Silva, boasts of reporting “during the pontificates of Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.” Both are antipopes. Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) was a peritus at Vatican II, architect of the nouvelle théologie, and never resigned the papal office validly (Canon 188.4, 1917 Code: renunciation must be free, manifest, and certain; his “renunciation” was conditional and ambiguous). Bergoglio (Francis) is a manifest heretic (idolatry at Pachamama, Amoris Laetitia adultery, Fiducia Supplicans blessing sodomy), automatically deposed ipso facto per Bellarmine (De Romano Pontifice II, 30) and Canon 188.4. Prevost (Leo XIV) continues the usurpation. The “pontificates” cited are the reign of the abominatio desolationis in the holy place.
The Theological Verdict: Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus
The entire article is a tissue of lies serving the Great Apostasy. There is no “persecution of the Church in Nicaragua.” There is a conflict between a Communist dictatorship and a Modernist sect, both enemies of Christ the King. The true Church in Nicaragua — if any remnant exists — is invisible to this report, hidden in catacombs, served by valid priests (if any remain) offering the true Mass of St. Pius V, keeping the Faith of Trent, Vatican I, and the immutable Magisterium. They do not pray for the “release of Bishop Mata”; they pray for the conversion of Nicaragua to the Social Reign of Christ the King, for the restoration of the Catholic State, for the destruction of the Masonic-Communist conspiracy, and for the end of the conciliar usurpation in Rome.
As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches (cited in the context): “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope… he cannot be the head of something of which he is not a member.” The same applies to “bishops” of the conciliar sect. Mata is a member of the synagoga Satanae (Apoc. 2:9), not the Ecclesia Christi. The video is not a “proof of life”; it is a proof of death — the spiritual death of a man who accepted invalid orders, a false hierarchy, and a counterfeit religion, now paraded by his Masonic masters.
Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat. The kingship of Christ is not negotiated in Managua or Rome; it is proclaimed from the Cross and the Altar of the true Mass. The conciliar sect’s theater in Nicaragua is but one scene in the mysterium iniquitatis (2 Thess. 2:7) now operating without restraint. The remedy is not “U.S. pressure” or “days of prayer” for false shepherds, but the restauratio omnia in Christo (Eph. 1:10) through the total rejection of the conciliar revolution and the return to the integral Tradition of the Saints.
Source:
Nicaraguan government releases video of bishop who has been missing for more than 40 days (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 15.08.2026