The tension between the Vatican and Managua reached its most tense point over the weekend when the government of President Daniel Ortega issued a statement proposing a suspension of diplomatic relations with the Holy See.
This decision came two days after the Supreme Pontiff compared the country to “a rude dictatorship” in an interview with the news portal Infobae”.
Former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Vatican Bautista Lara told the VOA that the Pope’s comments were “totally unfortunate and out of place” since, in his opinion, the comparison “does not correspond to historical reality nor does it correspond to his investiture.”
“You have to understand that Pope Francis has two investitures: he is head of state, of the Vatican State, a sui generis State within the nations of the world that has diplomatic ties internationally, but is also the Bishop of Rome.”
According to the former diplomat, the expression used by the Pope in said interview “distorts his role as a Catholic pastor and delegitimizes himself” by comparing the country to a dictatorship.
“I am sure that, at the level of the Holy See, they must be looking at what may be the most compatible justifications or expressions with their role to avoid those excesses that sometimes occur. The Pope is very given to go off the deep end and forget his diplomatic role as head of state and his necessary relationship with other states, particularly with Nicaragua’s,” Lara said.
On the other hand, the ex-ambassador of Nicaragua, Arturo Mfields, who served in the OAS, interprets the statements of the leader of the Catholic Church not only as “timely”, but in his opinion “they are the best spoken portrait that exists to date.” today of the dictatorship”.
“These are words that wisely and accurately reflect what the people of Nicaragua are experiencing. I believe that Vatican diplomacy did its best trying to free the priests and the return of religious freedom to Nicaragua. However, he really ran into a wall from the dictatorship,” lamented the former diplomat exiled in the United States.
an imprisoned bishop
Tensions between the Nicaraguan Catholic Church and the Ortega government began in April 2018 during protests against the president that left at least 300 dead, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
And Ortega began, according to opponents, a crusade against the Catholic Church, which housed protesters fleeing state repression in temples.
To date, Ortega has prohibited religious processions, has canceled dozens of Church radio and television channels, and keeps Bishop Rolando Álvarez in jail, although in the opinion of former diplomat Bautista Lara, the religious assumed “a role that led him to commit crimes, crimes of treason against the Fatherland”.
The bishops and priests “were used as instruments to spread false news, to create a well-known state of chaos and crisis in 2018 that was intended to take Nicaragua off the course of demonstrable prosperity that it had been on until then,” says Lara, who was also a founder. of the National Police.
“Unfortunately, (Álvarez) used his investiture to be an instrument of aggression, of destabilization. That cannot be accepted in a State that claims to be sovereign and independent. It seems to me that there is misinformation about the Pope, or rather, the Pope is being misinformed with the same frequency of other external authors who are architects and creators of this destabilization process, and internal actors who are part of it, ”he concluded.
Both the United States, the European Union, and Pope Francis himself have called for the release of Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who is being held in a maximum security facility in Managua, after being sentenced to 26 years in prison for crimes of “treason against the homeland”, among others.
But for the moment the petition seems not to be heard, indicate Nicaraguan human rights organizations, such as Cenidh, and contrary to this, diplomacy between the Vatican and Managua is running out.
Former ambassador Arturo McFields concludes that “Ortega has surpassed the dictatorships of Cuba and Venezuela because not even Cuba, although he has been in power for sixty-four years, has broken relations with the Vatican, neither has Venezuela, and they are also dictatorships.”
“We see a regime that is becoming more and more isolated and that is being recognized as a regime that violates human rights and with characteristics very similar to those of Hitler and everything that this represented at some point,” he concluded.
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