Nicaragua Closes Vatican Embassy
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega ordered the closure of the Vatican Embassy in Managua on March 12 after Pope Francis compared Nicaragua’s government to a Nazi dictatorship. Relations between Ortega and the Vatican have been strained since 2018 when Ortega’s men cracked down on anti-government protests.
When Catholic churches offered demonstrators food and shelter five years ago, Ortega accused Catholic bishops of inciting violence. These tensions approached a breaking point in February when Ortega’s government sentenced Bishop Rolanda Alvarez to 26 years in prison for “conspiracy and the distribution of false information.” The arrest prompted Pope Francis to tell an Argentine media outlet that Ortega’s Sandinista regime was like the “Communist dictatorship in 1917 or the Hitlerian one in 1935.”
Catholic spring: Until the 1960s, roughly 90 percent of Latin Americans were Catholics. This figure has declined to about 57 percent, but Catholicism is still a powerful force south of the Rio Grande.
The only three Latin American countries with decidedly bad relations with the Vatican are Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Yet Catholic bishops support opposition movements in all three countries, so there is a realistic chance that Arab Spring-style protests could lead to regime change in these countries. That is why Ortega is so fearful of Catholic bishops.
Latin empire: The late Herbert W. Armstrong long prophesied that the alliance between Europe and South America would grow extremely strong due to Catholic domination of both continents. In the book of Revelation, the Apostle John saw a vision of a beast that would make war in the end time. He tells us how to identify this beast with the following riddle: “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six” (Revelation 13:18).
Many are familiar with Roman numerals, where I is 1, V is 5, X is 10, etc. But few know that the Greek and Hebrew alphabets also use letters for numbers. The Apostle John wrote Revelation in Greek, and Irenaeus noted in his book Against Heresies that the letters in the Greek name Lateinos (ΛΑΤΕΙΝΟΣ) sum out to 666; the last of the four kingdoms seen by the Prophet Daniel was the Latin kingdom. King Lateinos founded the kingdom of Latium, which grew into the ancient Roman Empire, transformed into the medieval Holy Roman Empire, and spread across the Atlantic Ocean into the Holy Roman Empire’s Latin American colonies.
Learn more: For more information about the role the Holy Roman Empire and its allies are prophesied to play in world events, read our free booklets Isaiah’s End-Time Vision and Who or What Is the Prophetic Beast?
