The Vatican representative in Nicaragua, Waldemar Stalislaw Sommertag, left the country unexpectedly on March 6 and a message from the Apostolic Nunciature in Managua did not clarify whether the diplomat was absent permanently or temporarily.
A statement from the mission simply reported Stalislaw’s departure and explained that “the secretary of the Apostolic Nunciature, Monsignor Marcel Mbaye Diouf, was left in charge of this diplomatic mission as chargé d’affaires.”
The nuncio’s departure comes after a long estrangement from the government, to the point that President Daniel Ortega annulled by decree the figure of “dean of the diplomatic corps” that since 2000 corresponded to the representative of the Holy See.
Former Minister of Education Humberto Belli, one of the main critics of the Ortega government for its stance against the Catholic Church in the 1980s, reacted to the news with bewilderment.
“He was absent is ambiguous. It could be temporarily or it could be permanently. There is a strange ambiguity there and a slightly mysterious, suspicious case,” said Belli.
In diplomatic circles, the Vatican representative was considered the government’s main channel of communication with the international community, apart from its political allies such as Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, and now the People’s Republic of China.
The diplomat, of Polish origin, arrived in the country after the outbreak of the 2018 crisis and always described these efforts as a two-way channel “to carry and bring messages” for humanitarian purposes, and not as a channel for political negotiations.
In his public statements, he always spoke of the importance of dialogue.
“I am putting all my soul into a cause that is not mine, because it belongs to you and (if) you do not start collaborating to find a way out, you will not find a way out,” he said on one occasion.
Meanwhile, the Ortega government canceled the appointment of Nicaragua’s diplomatic representative to the Vatican, Sandy Anabel Dávila Sandoval, so now neither country has diplomatic representation at the ambassadorial level.
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