WORLD NEWS | Vatican closes embassy in Nicaragua after Ortega crackdown

VATICAN CITY, March 18 (AP) – The Vatican said Saturday that it has closed its embassy in Nicaragua after the government proposed suspending diplomatic ties, a long-running blow to the Catholic Church’s long-running siege by the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. The latest events in a year-long crackdown.

His Excellency Marcel Diouf, the Vatican’s representative in Managua, also left the country on Friday for Costa Rica, a Vatican official said on condition of anonymity.

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The Vatican’s action comes a week after the Nicaraguan government proposed suspending relations with the Holy See, and a year after Nicaragua forced the then papal nuncio to leave. It was unclear what else the proposed suspension would mean in diplomatic terms.

Relations between the church and Ortega’s government have been deteriorating since Nicaraguan authorities violently suppressed anti-government protests in 2018.

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Some Catholic leaders sheltered protesters in their churches, which later sought to act as mediators between the government and political opposition.

Ortega has branded Catholics he considers sympathetic to the opposition “terrorists” who support efforts to overthrow him. Dozens of religious figures were arrested or fled the country.

Last year, Nicaragua expelled two congregations of nuns, including the Missionaries of Charity founded by Mother Teresa.

Prominent Catholic bishop Rolando Álvarez was sentenced to 26 years in prison last month for refusing to board a plane carrying 222 dissidents and priests to exile in the United States. He was also stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship.

Pope Francis has remained largely silent on the issue, apparently not wanting to escalate tensions. But in an interview with Argentine outlet Infobae on March 10, following Alvarez’s sentencing, he called Ortega’s government a “brutal dictatorship” comparable to Hitler’s government led by an “unbalanced” president. on a par.

According to Vatican News, in accordance with diplomatic practice, the care of a Vatican embassy or embassy is entrusted to the Italian government. According to reports, diplomats from the European Union, Germany, France and Italy addressed the charge d’affaires ad interim before Diouf closed the embassy and left.

During the farewell ceremony, Germany’s ambassador to Nicaragua, Christoph Bundscherer, expressed regret over the embassy’s closure and asked Diouf to share information with Pope Francis, according to a statement on the German embassy’s Facebook page.

“Together with the Catholic Church, the EU representative in Nicaragua will always defend the Christian values ​​of freedom, tolerance and human dignity,” Bundscherer said in a statement.

The Nicaraguan government has banned all opposition demonstrations in the country since September 2018 and has also restricted Catholic activities inside churches, including banning the traditional street processions that thousands of Nicaraguans hold on Holy Week and Easter Eve.

The restrictions forced ecclesiastical authorities to stage a procession of the Cross at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Managua, as they did on Friday. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)