Nicaragua proposes suspending Vatican ties after comments

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — Nicaragua 's government said Sunday it has proposed suspending relations with the Vatican days after Pope Francis reportedly compared President Daniel Ortega's administration to a communist or Nazi dictatorship amid a crackdown on the Catholic Church in the Central American country.

Relations between the church and the Nicaraguan government have been deteriorating since 2018, when authorities violently repressed antigovernment protests.

Some Catholic leaders gave protesters shelter in their churches and the church later tried to act as a mediator between the regime and the opposition.

Ortega branded Catholic figures he saw as sympathetic to the opposition as “terrorists” who had backed efforts to overthrow him.

Dozens of religious figures were arrested or fled the country. Two congregations of nuns – including from the Missionaries of Charity order founded by Mother Teresa – were expelled last year, and prominent Catholic Bishop Rolando Álvarez was sentenced to 26 years in prison last month after he refused to board an airplane that would have flown him to exile in the United States.

He was also stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship.

Pope Francis had remained largely silent on the issue, apparently not wanting to inflame tensions, but in a March 10 interview with Argentine media outlet Infobae he called Ortega's government a “rude dictatorship” led by an “unbalanced” president.

In Nicaragua “we have a bishop in prison, a very serious and capable man, who wanted to give his testimony and did not accept exile,” Francis said, referring to Álvarez. “It is something from outside of what we are living, as if it were a communist dictatorship in 1917 or a Hitlerian one in 1935.”

Amid rumours that Nicaragua's government had broken off ties with the Vatican following the comments, its foreign ministry released a statement Sunday saying: “a suspension of relations between the Republic of Nicaragua and the Vatican State has been proposed.”

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