Pope Francis made official this Tuesday, September 6 the dismissal of Monsignor Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag as apostolic nuncio in Nicaragua. The decision comes six months after the Polish priest was expelled from the country by order of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. These six months also represent the longest period in the last 40 years that Nicaragua has not had an official representative of the Holy See.
“The Holy Father has appointed His Excellency Archbishop Waldemar Stanisław Sommertag, Titular Archbishop of Maastricht, Apostolic Nuncio in Senegal, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Mauritania, until now apostolic nuncio in Nicaragua”, reported the Official Bulletin of the Holy See.
The Vatican note reveals that, despite his expulsion on March 6, Monsignor Sommertag remained officially as nuncio in Nicaraguaand that his dismissal opens the possibility of the appointment of a new papal representative in the country, who would have to deal with the tense relations between the Nicaraguan Catholic Church and the dictatorship.
The expulsion of the nuncio was the beginning of a series of repressive acts against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which until now has left Bishop Rolando Álvarez under house arrest; seven priests, two seminarians and a layman imprisoned, 18 religious taken out of the country and the closure of a dozen religious media. In addition, the National Police has entered by force and raided a parish, preventing parishioners from receiving the Eucharist inside the temple and besieging other priests in their churches.
Regarding the situation of the Nicaraguan Church, Pope Francis expressed on Sunday, August 21, his “concern and pain for the situation created in Nicaragua that involves people and institutions”.
The last time Nicaragua was without an official Vatican representative for more than six months was in 1980. That year, nuncio Gabriel Montalvo Higuera was removed from office on March 18, and his replacement—Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo—was announced until October 25, according to the catholic-hierarchy.org database
Since that date, six apostolic nuncios have been appointed for Nicaragua, who generally took days or weeks between withdrawal and appointment. In that period, the election of Fortunatus Nwachukwu took the longest: four months. His predecessor, Monsignor Henry Józef Nowacki, was dismissed on June 28, 2012, and Nwachukwu was appointed on November 12 of the same year.
Relations between Nicaragua and the Holy See were born in 1908 and Monsignor Sommertag was the twentieth diplomatic representative of the Vatican in the country.
Sommertag expulsion
The expulsion of the nuncio was forged as a consequence of at least four incidents provoked by the regime, between January 10 and March 5, 2022, revealed to CONFIDENTIAL various sources linked to Sommertag.
On January 10, the date of the Ortega’s self-proclamation as presidentthe nuncio traveled to Rome —where he held a private audience with the pope—, which generated “a strong claim” from Ortega and Murillo.
The Polish priest returned to the country at the end of January. Upon arrival at the airport, Sommertag was unable to go immediately to his residence, because government authorities transferred him to the Foreign Ministry, where he met with Deputy Foreign Minister Arlette Marenco, who warned him not to make any public statement about the situation of the prisoners. politicians.
The third incident occurred after February 24, after the expulsion of the Colombian ambassador, Alfredo Rangel Suárezdeclared non grata by the Government, when the nuncio organized a virtual event to fire the Colombian diplomat, which caused a new claim from the Nicaraguan authorities.
The fourth incident and trigger for the expulsion occurred on Saturday, March 5, when the pope’s representative was followed by police officers as he left his residence. After the tension generated by the police harassment, Monsignor Sommertag had a telephone exchange with a senior government official, who told him that he had to leave the country within a peremptory period.
