WelCom April 2023
The Nicaraguan Government has closed the apostolic nunciature in Managua and its embassy to the Holy See, after Pope Francis compared President Daniel Ortega’s regime to communist and Nazi dictatorships. Mr Ortega ordered the suspension of diplomatic relations on March 12, two days after the publication of an interview with the Pope on the Argentine news outlet Infobae to mark the tenth anniversary of his pontificate.
Responding to questions on conditions in Latin America, and on the Nicaraguan Government’s attack on the Church, Pope Francis said: ‘I have no other choice but to think that [Mr Ortega] is mentally unbalanced.’ The Pope praised jailed Matagalpa Bishop Rolando Álvarez, sentenced to 26 years imprisonment in February, as ‘a very responsible man, a very capable man’. The Nicaraguan regime’s conduct, said the Pope, was ‘like bringing back the 1917 communist dictatorship, or the 1935 Hitler dictatorship’.