The Vatican confirmed that the Ortega regime requested suspension of diplomatic relations with the Holy See and the closure of the Nunciature in Nicaragua, according to Holy See sources quoted in Vatican News.
The Nicaraguan Ministry of Foreign Affairs alleged in a statement that “a suspension of diplomatic relations has been proposed between the Vatican State and the Republic of Nicaragua,” suggesting the possibility of an agreement, but the Vatican revealed that it was a unilateral request for Ortega, who was received with “sadness” by the Apostolic Saint.
Nicaragua’s request was executed at the Vatican headquarters on Friday night, hours after Pope Francis described the Ortega regime as a “Hitlerian dictatorship”, in an interview with the Argentine media outlet Infobae.
Diplomatic sources in Rome informed CONFIDENTIAL that the representative of the Sandinista government before the Saint, Yara Suhyén Pérez Calero, Headquarters, “orally” communicated the decision to the Vatican Secretariat of State.
Pérez Calero serves as Minister Counselor at the Holy See. Nicaragua has not had an ambassador to the Apostolic See since September 21, 2021, when Ortega canceled the appointment of Elliette Ortega Sotomayor, who replaced the former deputy director of the National Police, former commissioner Francisco Bautista Lara, in March of that year.
Closing of the Nunciature in ten days
According to the Argentine newspaper La Naciónthe Holy See acknowledged receipt of the communication from the Ortega regime with another “verbal note”, in which they expressed their “sadness” over the decision.
“As in that” note verbale” there was no mention of a break in diplomatic relations, “formally there is no break,” Vatican sources told La Nación, who also admitted that “the situation is very delicate and nobody knows what could happen in the short term”.
“It is clear that it is a step that is close to breaking, although not necessarily and, in any case, suspension is not breaking,” the same sources explained to the Argentine newspaper.
The Holy See “gave instructions to the current Vatican business manager, Senegalese Monsignor Mbaye Diouf, who is in Managua, to close the Nunciature and leave the country,” the La Nación report cites.
The closure of the Nunciature is scheduled to take place in ten days, according to diplomatic sources in Rome, when the secretary of the diplomatic mission leaves the country.
Monsignor Diouf has been in charge of the Vatican diplomatic mission since the beginning of March 2022, after the dictatorship de facto expelled the apostolic nuncio, Monsignor Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag.
