VATICAN CITY — The Vatican stated Saturday it had closed its embassy in Nicaragua after the rustic’s authorities proposed postponing diplomatic members of the family, the most recent episode in a yearslong crackdown at the Catholic Church by way of the management of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.
The Vatican’s consultant to Managua, Monsignor Marcel Diouf, additionally left the rustic Friday, sure for Costa Rica, a Vatican respectable stated, talking on situation of anonymity.
The Vatican motion got here every week after the Nicaraguan authorities proposed postponing members of the family with the Holy See, and a 12 months after Nicaragua compelled the papal ambassador on the time to go away. It’s no longer transparent what extra the proposed suspension would entail in diplomatic phrases.
Relations between the church and Ortega’s authorities had been deteriorating since 2018, when Nicaraguan government violently repressed anti-government protests.
Some Catholic leaders gave protesters safe haven in their church buildings, and the church later attempted to behave as a mediator between the federal government and the political opposition.
Ortega branded Catholic figures he noticed as sympathetic to the opposition as “terrorists” who had sponsored efforts to overthrow him. Dozens of non secular figures have been arrested or fled the rustic.
Two congregations of nuns, together with from the Missionaries of Charity order based by way of Mother Teresa, have been expelled from Nicaragua ultimate 12 months.
Prominent Catholic Bishop Rolando Álvarez was once sentenced to 26 years in jail ultimate month after he refused to board an aircraft that flew 222 dissidents and clergymen to exile in the United States. He additionally was once stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship.
Pope Francis had remained in large part silent at the factor, it sounds as if no longer short of to inflame tensions. But in a March 10 interview with Argentine media outlet Infobae, after Alvarez’s sentencing, he known as Ortega’s authorities a “rude dictatorship” similar to Hitler’s that was once led by way of an “unbalanced” president.
According to Vatican News, the care of the Vatican’s embassy, or nunciature, was once entrusted to the Italian authorities, consistent with diplomatic conventions. The record stated diplomats of the European Union, Germany, France and Italy gave Diouf, the chargé d’affaires, a farewell salute sooner than he shuttered the diplomatic post and left.
During the farewell rite, Germany’s ambassador to Nicaragua, Christoph Bundscherer, expressed be apologetic about on the embassy’s closure and requested Diouf to proportion a message with Pope Francis, consistent with a observation at the German Embassy’s Facebook web page.
“Together with the Catholic Church, the representatives of the European Union in Nicaragua will also always defend the Christian values of freedom, tolerance and human dignity,” Bundscherer stated, consistent with the observation.
The Nicaraguan authorities, which since September 2018 has banned all opposition demonstrations in the rustic, additionally limited Catholic actions within church buildings, together with banning the standard boulevard processions that hundreds of Nicaraguans used to rejoice in the lead as much as Holy Week and Easter.
The restrictions compelled church government to carry the Stations of the Cross procession at the grounds of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Managua, as they did Friday.
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Selser reported from Mexico City.
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