All this after the bishops have expressed in recent weeks successive criticisms of Vox for its anti-immigration policy and, in particular, its municipal initiative in Jumilla (Murcia) to prevent Muslim prayer in public spaces.
The Holy See requested the Spanish Executive to the Placet for Poppio at the end of March, a few days after the appointment of the nuncio that had until then, Filipino Bernardito Auza, as representative of the Catholic Church to the European Union.
However, the months have passed without the government having given the green light even on the arrival of the first in Madrid.
The delay in the granting of a placet is used in diplomacy as a form of protest against the lack of suitability of the chosen person or as punishment for the country that requests it when there are problems in bilateral relations.
During Francis' papacy, for example, the Vatican was delaying the green light for the candidacy of a French homosexual diplomat, Laurent Stefanini for his homosexual status, until Paris threw the towel with which he had been head of Protocol of Sarkozy and Francois Hollande and proposed another person.
In Stefanini's case a decade ago, there was not an explicit Vatican non-explicit, but a silence that amounted to rejection and lasted for more than a year. Something similar to the situation of the Spanish Government with Poppio when five months of the start of the processing of his place are to be met.
An excessive delay, in the opinion of the aforementioned sources, for what are the diplomatic uses between Spain and the Catholic Church.
The nerves in Rome emerged at the end of July when they saw that the Sánchez Executive was going on vacation without solving the placet of the Italian religious, the current nuncio of the Holy See in Indonesia and which was previously stationed in Cameroon.
The Catholic newspaper Silere non possum came to talk about a Spanish veto on July 29 and revealed that Poppio's name had disappeared from the radar as León XIV was looking for another candidate for Madrid after weeks of waiting and confidential negotiations....information that the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs called falsa "false".
The main obstacle to Sánchez's green light to the new nuncio was the controversy of mid-June when the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) positioned itself in favor of an electoral advance after the case of corruption of which he was Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán.
The Minister of the Presidency, Felix Bolaños, reacted with a letter in which he accused the bishops of departing from the most elementary institutional respect - and of approaching the PP and Vox with this approach.
Go ahead, dear president, the utmost respect for his personal political preferences, as well as those of the rest of the Spanish bishops. However, I would like to convey my surprise at the statement that this request is made outside partisan interests while accurately reproducing de forma exactathe requests and arguments of the two main opposition parties, Bolaños stressed in the letter sent at the time to the President of the EEC, Luis Argaello. And the consequence of this was a delay in Poppio's placet.
The turns have changed in recent weeks with the statements of several bishops against Vox following the controversy over the ban on Muslim celebrations in Jumilla sports venues.
First it was the Cardinal Archbishop of Madrid and Vice libertad religiosa President of the EEC, José Cobo, who stressed that religious freedom must be welcomed and the freedom of worship supported.
More incisive was the Bishop of Tarragona, Joan Planellas, who warned Vox that a xenophobic cannot be a true Christian.
The last veiled criticism came from the secretary general of the Episcopate and canonist, César García Magán, who referred to the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, when criticizing the Catholic 'psycephalons' during a Eucharist he presided over in the Primate Cathedral of Spain.
Two internal foreign procedures
Foreign Office has begun to unlock the appointment of the new nuncio.
First with an internal note from the Undersecretariat, after the approval of the embassy headed by Isabel Celaá, and days later with another to the Technical General Secretariat to send the placet to the Council of Ministers.
Two internal procedures within the department of Albares that anticipate an upcoming green light, possibly at the first meeting of the Executive after the holidays.
The new nuncio is considered a conservative-profile man. Born in 1960 in the Italian town of Savona, he was ordained a priest in 1985.
In the 1990s he became a close collaborator of Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Secretary of State of the Holy See between 1991 and 2006 and prelate of the IOR (Institute for Religious Works), the well-known Vatican Bank, during a stage marked by financial turbulence and judicial investigations that affected the environment of the Institute, although without formal implications for Pioppo, according to Silere non possum.