The Vatican said on Saturday (12) that the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega expelled from Nicaragua its apostolic nuncio in Managua – a kind of ambassador of the Holy See. Monsignor Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag left the country last Sunday — information obtained by AFP from a diplomatic source.
In its statement, the Vatican said it had received “with surprise and pain” the notification that the regime had withdrawn its consent from its representative, “forcing him to leave the country immediately”.
Of Polish nationality, Sommertag arrived in Managua in May 2018, when the country was hit by large anti-regime protests, in which the Catholic Church acted as a mediator and which were followed by an escalation of authoritarianism by the dictatorship.
Relations between Ortega and the Catholic bishops have been strained ever since. The ruling party accuses the clergy of having conspired with their opponents for a “coup”, as it describes in the demonstrations.
The Vatican Nuncio to Managua participated as a witness in the second stage of a dialogue held in 2019, which was suspended without results. The president of the Bishops’ Conference of Nicaragua, Archbishop Carlos Herrera, told Channel 10 last Tuesday (8) that relations “were not good” between Sommertag and the Ortega regime and that Pope Francis would probably ask for his resignation.
The Holy See called the decision “incomprehensible” and said that “this serious and unjustified unilateral decision does not reflect the feelings of the people of Nicaragua, who are deeply Christian.”
More than 40 critics of the dictatorship were arrested in Nicaragua between June and December 2021, including seven potential rivals of Ortega’s in a sham election that took him to a fourth term. Added to this group are another 120 people arrested for participating in the 2018 protests.
