Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Monsignor Juan Abelardo Mata from the pastoral government of the Diocese of Esteli, and announced the appointment of Monsignor Rolando Alvarez, Bishop of Matagalpa, as Apostolic Administrator of the “vacant seat” of the Diocese of Esteli.

The Apostolic Embassy of Nicaragua, led by Monsignor Monsignor Valdemar Stanislav Sommertag, reported the Pope’s decision through a press release on Tuesday, July 6.

The letter also states that Monsignor Rolando Alvarez will remain in charge of the diocese of Esteli until the appointment and subsequent inauguration of the new bishop of that ecclesiastical district.

Read also: Bishop Abelardo Matta will propose Bishop Silvio Baez as his successor in the Vatican

The Last June 26, it was confirmed that Mgr. Mata was waiting for the Vatican to formally notify him of his retirement. Bishop of the Diocese of Esteli. Monsignor Mata has devoted 31 years of his life as patron of that jurisdiction since 1990.

“I am obligated, by legal mandate, to tender my resignation as soon as I reach my seventy-fifth birthday. I have already fulfilled this mandate on May 24 of this year, one month before the appointed date: my seventy-fifth birthday,” Monsignor Mata told LA PRENSA in that time.

On May 24, he submitted his resignation in accordance with the canon law law that governs the Catholic Church worldwide.

What will you do next?

Archbishop Matta shared in these diaries that if his resignation was accepted and when the Holy See informed him of his retirement, he was thinking of “cooperating in the academic formation of seminarians, establishing a spiritual center and helping young people close to this center in his work. Vocational training in the world of agriculture and in his Christian formation: I follow the motto Don Bosco: Training Upright Citizens and Good Christians.

He insists that “there is much to be done in this beloved country in order to dream of a nation in which God and his envoy, Jesus Christ, is loved from the heart.” Immediately, Monsignor Mata told the Nicaraguans with a clear message amid so much adversity and uncertainty that “God does not create useless beings and every human being is an irreplaceable link in the redemptive chain. We cannot therefore be sterile: sterility is a betrayal of God’s love plans and extent Good is to open the eyes of others to discover one’s mission in personal existence.”

The church should be next to the city

When asked what role the Church in Nicaragua should adopt in the context of a social and political crisis and an exacerbating human rights crisis, Monsignor Mata said that it “must be on the side of the people”.

“The role it must always play is on the side of the people of God in history, and therefore, those who are at the forefront of this people formed by the children of God. This task becomes all the more urgent when the human world enters into crisis (or the Church itself enters into crisis) because of the desire for power and control that destroys all healthy coexistence, harms the brotherhood of men, and kills the power of dialogue. We become wolves of others: Homo homini lupus – which means man is a wolf to man or man is a wolf to man -».

The devout also states that the Church exists in history to “push” the work of human renewal and points out that this is achieved by “continuous preaching of the Word of God, prayer – ‘love’ towards God – and the Overlord. And spiritual works of mercy – ‘loving’ towards others. This should be encouraged in more Sad times, such as periods when peoples determine their future as citizens,” Monsignor Mata told LA PRENSA.