(MANAGUA) Nicaragua’s foreign ministry said Sunday after Pope Francis called the Central American country a “crude dictatorship,” Nicaragua is considering suspending relations with the Vatican.
“Faced with information published by sources linked to the Catholic Church, the Government of Reconciliation and National Unity of blessed and still free Nicaragua determines that it is envisaged to suspend diplomatic relations between the Vatican State and the Republic of Nicaragua,” the ministry said. in the current situation.
On Friday, Pope Francis described President Daniel Ortega’s regime as a “crude dictatorship,” in an interview with the Argentina daily. infobae. “With all due respect, I have no choice but to believe that this leader is out of balance,” he said.
The Pope continued, “As if we wanted to establish the communist dictatorship of 1917 or the Hitlerian dictatorship of 1935,” adding, “These are crude dictatorships.”
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega estimated at the end of February that a “mafia” inside the Vatican had decided to elect the pope and senior religious leaders.
Cardinals must be elected by the people and there must be a vote among the Catholic people […] So that the pope is also elected, by direct vote of the people, so that it is the people who decide and not the mafia that is organized there in the Vatican,” Ortega said.
This speech by the President of Nicaragua came more than a week after a statement by Pope Francis in which he said he was “concerned” and “saddened” by the situation in Nicaragua, particularly after the 26-year prison sentence of Bishop Rolando Alvarez. Deportation of 222 opponents to the United States.
On February 9, Mr. Ortega’s government released and deported 222 political prisoners to the United States and stripped them of their Nicaraguan citizenship.
Bishop Rolando Alvarez, who has been in custody since August 2022, refused to extradite him and was sentenced the next day to 26 years in prison, mainly for “conspiracy and spreading false news”.
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