ROME — The Vatican registered its intense displeasure Saturday with the decision of the Nicaraguan government to deport Pope Francis’s apostolic nuncio in Managua.
With “great surprise and regret,” the Holy See received the communication that the government of Nicaragua has decided to withdraw its approval from the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, “requiring him to leave the country immediately after the notification of the measure,” reads a Vatican communiqué.
Media reports this week indicated that Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega had declared the pope’s representative to Nicaragua “persona non grata” and banished him from the country. Archbishop Sommertag has reportedly arrived in Rome following his expulsion.
In its communiqué Saturday, the Vatican expressed its perplexity over the archbishop’s deportation, noting that he had always worked for the good of the Nicaraguan people.
This measure seems “incomprehensible,” the text reads, because in the course of his mission Archbishop Sommertag worked “with profound dedication for the good of the Church and of the Nicaraguan people, especially the most vulnerable, always seeking to foster good relations between the Apostolic See and the Nicaraguan Authorities.”
“It should be remembered, in particular, his participation as a witness and accompanist of the National Dialogue Table between the Government and the Political Opposition, in view of the reconciliation of the country and the release of political prisoners,” the note added.
The Vatican called the banishment a “grave and unjustified unilateral measure,” which surely “does not reflect the sentiments of the profoundly Christian people of Nicaragua,” while also reiterating its “full confidence in the Pontifical Representative.”
It has been proposed that Sommertag lost favor with the Ortega regime by referring to “political prisoners” detained by the government, among whom are the opposition candidates intended to run against Ortega in upcoming elections. The nuncio also lamented that Nicaragua is a country where there are “a lot of lies.”
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