Tánaiste Micheál Martin has called for the “immediate and unconditional” release of a Nicaraguan bishop who was sentenced to 26 years’ imprisonment after refusing to leave the country for exile insisting he wanted to be with his people.

Mr Martin said he was “gravely concerned” about Bishop Rolando Álvarez (56) and the wider crackdown in the Central American country under authoritarian leader Daniel Ortega.

It comes as the regime announced a new ban on public processions for the ‘way of the cross’, a popular devotion in the mainly-Catholic country.

Mr Martin insisted that the Department of Foreign Affairs is closely monitoring the bishop’s detention “and continues to call for his immediate and unconditional release, as well as that of all other remaining political prisoners”.

“The continued human rights violations, crackdowns on opposition voices, on civil society and on independent media, together with backsliding on democratic norms, are unacceptable,” Mr Martin said in a written answer to a question from Laois-Offaly independent TD Carol Nolan.