The Vatican stated it had closed its embassy in Nicaragua after the nation’s authorities proposed suspending diplomatic relations, the newest episode in a years-long crackdown on the Catholic Church by the administration of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

The Vatican’s consultant to Managua, Monsignor Marcel Diouf, additionally left the nation on Friday, sure for Costa Rica, a Vatican official stated.

The Vatican motion got here every week after the Nicaraguan authorities proposed suspending relations with the Holy See, and a 12 months after Nicaragua pressured the papal ambassador on the time to depart.

Relations between the church and Mr Ortega’s authorities have been deteriorating since 2018, when Nicaraguan authorities violently repressed anti-government protests.

Some Catholic leaders gave protesters shelter of their church buildings, and the church later tried to behave as a mediator between the federal government and the political opposition.

Mr Ortega branded Catholic figures he noticed as sympathetic to the opposition as “terrorists” who had backed efforts to overthrow him. Dozens of spiritual figures had been arrested or fled the nation.

Two congregations of nuns, together with from the Missionaries of Charity order based by Mother Teresa, had been expelled from Nicaragua final 12 months.

Prominent Catholic Bishop Rolando Alvarez was sentenced to 26 years in jail final month after he refused to board a airplane that flew 222 dissidents and clergymen to exile within the US. He was additionally stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship.

Pope Francis had remained largely silent on the issuebut in a March 10 interview with Argentine media outlet Infobae, after Bishop Alvarez’s sentencing, he known as Mr Ortega’s authorities a “rude dictatorship” akin to Hitler’s that was led by an “unbalanced” president.

According to Vatican News, the care of the Vatican’s embassy, or nunciature, was entrusted to the Italian authorities, based on diplomatic conventions.

The report stated diplomats of the European Union, Germany, France and Italy gave Monsignor Diouf, the cost d’affaires, a farewell salute earlier than he closed the diplomatic publish and left.

During the farewell ceremony, Germany’s ambassador to Nicaragua, Christoph Bundscherer, expressed remorse on the embassy’s closure and requested Monsignor Diouf to share a message with Pope Francis, based on a press release on the German Embassy’s Facebook web page.

“Together with the Catholic Church, the representatives of the European Union in Nicaragua will also always defend the Christian values of freedom, tolerance and human dignity,” Mr Bundscherer stated, based on the assertion.

The Nicaraguan authorities, which since September 2018 has banned all opposition demonstrations within the nation, additionally restricted Catholic actions inside church buildings, together with banning the normal avenue processions that 1000’s of Nicaraguans used to have a good time within the lead as much as Holy Week and Easter.

The restrictions pressured church authorities to carry the Stations of the Cross procession on the grounds of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Managua, as they did on Friday.