Diplomatic Briefing
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Newsline: Vatican closes embassy in Nicaragua
The Vatican said Saturday it had closed its embassy in Nicaragua after the country’s government proposed suspending diplomatic relations, the latest episode in a yearslong crackdown on the Catholic Church by the administration of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. The Vatican’s representative to Managua, Monsignor Marcel Diouf, also left the country Friday, bound for Costa Rica, a Vatican official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. (https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/politics/article/vatican-closes-embassy-in-nicaragua-after-17847042.php) The Vatican action came a week after the Nicaraguan government proposed suspending relations with the Holy See, and a year after Nicaragua forced the papal ambassador at the time to leave.
Newsline: Nicaragua closes embassy to Vatican and Vatican embassy in Managua
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has ordered the closure of the Vatican Embassy in Managua and that of the Nicaraguan Embassy to the Vatican in Rome, a senior Vatican source said on Sunday. (https://neuters.de/world/americas/nicaragua-closes-vatican-embassy-managua-nicaraguan-embassy-vatican-source-2023-03-12/) Nicaragua signalled that the move, which came a few days after Pope Francis compared the Nicaraguan government to a dictatorship, was “a suspension” of diplomatic relations. The Vatican source said that while the closures do not automatically mean a total break of relations between Managua and the Holy See, they are serious steps towards that possibility. Bishop Rolando Alvarez, a vocal critic of Ortega, was sentenced to more than 26 years in prison in Nicaragua last month on charges that included treason, undermining national integrity and spreading false news. Alvazez was convicted after he refused to leave the country along with 200 political prisoners released by Ortega’s government and sent to the United States. Alvarez refused to board the plane and was stripped of his citizenship. In an interview published last week with Latin American online news outlet Infobae ahead of Monday’s 10th anniversary of his pontificate, the pope pointed to Alvarez’s imprisonment and likened what was happening in Nicaragua to the “1917 Communist dictatorship or that of Hitler in 1935”. Staff in both embassies had been down to barebones for years with only a chargé d’affaires for the Vatican in Managua and almost no one for Nicaragua in Rome.
Newsline: Vatican diplomat wanted in Canada on child porn charges
An arrest warrant has been issued in Canada for Msgr. Carlo Capella, the Vatican diplomat recalled from service in Washington in late August, who already was the subject of a Vatican criminal investigation involving child pornography. Police in Windsor, Ontario, issued a statement Sept. 28 saying, “A Canada-wide arrest warrant has been issued for Carlo Capella, a 50-year-old male, for the charges of: access(ing) child pornography, possess(ing) child pornography and distribut(ing) child pornography.” “Investigators believe that the offenses occurred while the suspect was visiting a place of worship in Windsor,” the statement said. “Investigators have determined that the suspect has returned to his residence in Italy.” (https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican-diplomat-also-wanted-canada-child-porn-charges) Capella had worked since the summer of 2016 at the Vatican nunciature in Washington. Prior to that, he worked on the Italy desk at the Vatican Secretariat of State. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1993 for the Archdiocese of Milan. Although the Vatican has not publicly confirmed Capella’s identity, it did not object when many news outlets identified him as the Vatican diplomat recalled from Washington.
Newsline: The oldest embassy in the world turns 400
The permanent diplomatic mission of the Kingdom of Spain to the Holy See was established 400 years ago, and is therefore the oldest in the world still in existence. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Pope’s Secretary of State, presided over a Mass this past October 12 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the establishment of the Spanish Embassy in the Vatican, the oldest embassy in the world. (https://aleteia.org/2022/10/14/the-oldest-embassy-in-the-world-turns-400/) The Spanish Embassy still sits today in the Monaldeschi Palace, also known as the Palace of Spain (Palazzo di Spagna). Until 1622, the Spanish ambassador did not have a permanent residence. He chose to establish it on a square located in the heart of Rome which, in homage, was later baptized Spain Square, Piazza di Spagna. The Square is today a tourist hot spot.
Newsline: Ukraine’s ambassador criticises Pope over comments on Russian killed by car bomb
Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican on Wednesday criticised Pope Francis for referring to Darya Dugina, daughter of a prominent Russian ultra-nationalist, who was killed by a car bomb near Moscow, as an innocent victim of war. It is highly unusual for ambassadors to the Vatican to criticise the pope publicly. “Innocents pay for war,” Francis said earlier at his Wednesday general audience in a sentence where he referred to “that poor girl thrown in the air by a bomb under the seat of a car in Moscow”. In a Tweet, Andrii Yurash, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See, said the pope’s words were “disappointing”. “How (is it) possible to mention one of ideologists of (Russian) imperialism as innocent victim?” he said. Francis called the war “madness”. He said Ukrainian and Russian children had been killed and that “being an orphan knows no nationality”. In his Tweet, Yurash said: “can’t speak in same categories about aggressor and victim, rapist and raped”. (https://news.yahoo.com/pope-warns-potential-nuclear-disaster-083301194.html) The Vatican did not immediately respond to Yurash’s comments.
Newsline: Ex-Vatican ambassador to France goes on trial on sexual molestation charges
The Vatican’s former ambassador to France goes on trial in Paris on Tuesday accused of molesting four men in the latest sex scandal to rock the Roman Catholic church. Prosecutors opened an investigation after a junior official at Paris City Hall accused papal nuncio Luigi Ventura, then 74, of molestation in January 2019, and city authorities filed a complaint to the Paris prosecutor. (https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-france-religion-trial/ex-vatican-ambassador-to-france-goes-on-trial-on-sexual-molestation-charges-idUKKBN27Q1B5) Ventura’s lawyer has denied the allegations. The Vatican last year lifted Ventura’s diplomatic immunity and he resigned from his post in December. A Paris City Hall official told Reuters last year that in January 2019, during Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s New Year address, Ventura caressed the junior official’s buttocks repeatedly. Since then, three other men have come forward with similar allegations. Jade Dousselin, a lawyer for one of the men, a City Hall community manager who was 39 at the time, said her client had been molested in 2018. Ventura was papal envoy in France from 2008 to 2019, following postings in several African countries and in Canada.
Newsline: Coronavirus kills Iran’s ex-ambassador to Vatican
Iran’s former ambassador to the Vatican and prominent cleric Hadi Khosrowshahi has died of the coronavirus, local media reported. According to the semiofficial Tasnim News Agency, the 81-year-old cleric died at a hospital in Iran. (https://www.dailysabah.com/world/mid-east/coronavirus-kills-irans-ex-ambassador-to-vatican) Iran had put the death toll in the country from the coronavirus to 26, with 254 confirmed cases. Iran has seen a spike in COVID-19 cases over the past week. Iran is one of over 35 countries that account for the nearly 80,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 around the world. The outbreak’s epicenter in Iran is the holy Shiite city of Qom, where the faithful in reverence reach out to kiss and touch a famous shrine. That shrine and others have remained open, despite Iran’s civilian government calling for them to be closed.
Newsline: Pope names first woman to senior Vatican diplomatic post
Pope Francis named the first woman to hold a high-ranking post in the Secretariat of State, the male-dominated Vatican’s diplomatic and administrative nerve center. Italian lay woman Francesca Di Giovanni, 66, will assume a newly-created post in a division known as the Section for Relations with States where she takes the rank of under-secretary, effectively one of two deputy foreign ministers. (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-women/pope-names-first-woman-to-senior-vatican-diplomatic-post-idUSKBN1ZE1XC) The Roman Catholic Church allows only men to be ordained as priests and women have traditionally been consigned to the shadows of its administration. However, women’s groups, including the International Union of Superiors General (UISG), an umbrella group of Catholic nuns, have long called on the pope to appoint more females to senior jobs within the Vatican bureaucracy.
Newsline: Italian diplomat named as Vatican’s new ambassador to United Nations
Pope Francis has named Italian Archbishop Gabriele Giordano Caccia to serve as his new representative to the United Nations. The appointment was announced on Saturday by the Holy See. Caccia will succeed outgoing papal nuncio, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, who has held the post since 2014. Last month, he was named as the nuncio to Spain and the Principality of Andorra. (https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2019/11/16/pope-names-italian-diplomat-as-vaticans-new-ambassador-to-united-nations-do-not-publish/) Caccia now becomes the seventh Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations in New York since the Holy See became a Permanent Observer State on April 6, 1964.
Newsline: Vatican lifts immunity of papal diplomat accused of sexual assault in France
The Holy See has waived the diplomatic immunity of a Vatican diplomat who has been under investigation by authorities in Paris for allegedly sexually assaulting a city official. Alessandro Gisotti, interim director of the Vatican Press Office, said the move was an “extraordinary gesture” that underlined the diplomat’s desire to fully cooperate with French authorities. (https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2019/07/08/vatican-lifts-immunity-papal-diplomat-accused-sexual-assault) In January, prosecutors in Paris had launched a formal investigation into an allegation against Italian Archbishop Luigi Ventura, 74, a Vatican diplomat who has been representing the Holy See in France since 2009. Gisotti confirmed July 8 that the Holy See had waived the diplomat’s immunity in light of the criminal proceedings underway against him in France.
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