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Nicaragua – Amid the ongoing tensions between Managua and the Holy See, as reported by the Vatican News website, the Vatican’s representative in Nicaragua has left the country as a result of the suspension of diplomatic relations with that country.
Bilateral relations had been on the verge of collapse after Pope Francis referred to the government of Socialist President Daniel Ortega in an interview last week as a dictatorship.
The portal indicated that the diplomat, Monsignor Marcel Diouf, had traveled to Costa Rica on Friday and that heThe closure of the embassy “occurred as a result of a request from the Nicaraguan government.”
Custody of the apostolic nunciature in Managua has been “entrusted to the Italian Republic” under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
The words that started it all
In an interview with the Argentine portal Infobae On March 10, Francisco described the Ortega government as a “crude dictatorship” led by an “unbalanced” president.
In the interview, the Argentine Pope also expressed concern, without naming him, for Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who in February was sentenced to 26 years in prison for “attacking national integrity,” among other charges.
Álvarez has been under house arrest since August and refused to be deported along with 222 political dissidents to the United States.
Nicaragua and its position
Shortly after, the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that “the suspension of diplomatic relations (with the Vatican) has been proposed.”
Days before the pontiff’s comments, the Managua government closed two universities affiliated with the Catholic Church.
Since 2007, Ortega has engaged in increasingly authoritarian practices, exiling or jailing dissidents and rivals, overturning presidential term limits, and seizing control of all state powers.
Original article in France 24
