In Bolivia, ten bishops face police interrogation about their political role in the run-up to the forced resignation of then-President Evo Morales. This was ordered by the attorney general in mid-February. In 2016, the president’s indefinite re-election had been rejected by a majority in a referendum. When Morales ran for the highest office of state for the fourth time in 2019, a disputed re-election resulted in protests and strikes. Morales fled abroad and returned after his party won again. In the October 2020 presidential election, the candidate of the leftist MAS (Movimiento as Socialismo) party, Luis Arce, once finance and economy minister under Morales, won. The church has now come under scrutiny in the wake of the political reappraisal of the incidents of 2019, after bishops acted as peace brokers at the time.

The archbishop of La Paz, Percy Galván, assessed the summons in connection with coup allegations as an attempt at intimidation. “We saw this in Nicaragua, where a bishop was imprisoned because he did not want to take on going into exile.” Archbishop Galván is quoted in media reports with these words from a television interview. “We are already old priests. They have threatened and persecuted us. This is already a long story,” he further explained, according to the reports.

Back in 2018, then-President Morales had to withdraw planned restrictions on religious freedom after protests. In a draft law, religious organizations had been equated with terrorists. Christians had protested strongly against this – with success.