The Vatican has pledged full recognition of Spain's sovereignty over Socialist government plans to rebury the former dictator, General Francisco Franco (1892-1975), after its outgoing Nuncio provoked diplomatic protests by criticising the government's policies.

"The Holy See's position on Franco's exhumation is clear - it is based on full respect for the sovereignty of the Spanish state and its legal system", said Alessandro Gisotti, the Vatican's press office director. "The former Apostolic Nuncio has already denied through the press any intention of issuing a judgement on internal political issues - his statements were in a purely personal capacity".

The official spoke to journalists as reactions continued to remarks by Archbishop Renzo Fratini, who accused premier Pedro Sanchez's government in an June interview with Europa Press of inadvertently "resurrecting Franco" through its decision to exhume him, adding that he believed the dictator should have been "left in peace" and answerable to "God's judgement" four decades after his death.

The criticisms by the archbishop, whose resignation, aged 75, after 10 years as Nuncio, was accepted by the Pope in early July, were protested as "inadmissible and unacceptable" by Spain's deputy premier, Carmen Calvo, who accused the Nuncio of "interfering of the affairs of another state".

The Sanchez government ordered Franco's exhumation from his mausoleum in a Benedictine basilica at the Valley of the Fallen, near Madrid, in August 2018, two months after taking office, as part of plans to transform the site into "a place of common memory". Members of the dictator's family said their condition would be his reburial in Madrid's Catholic La Almudena cathedral, and appealed to the Church to block his removal until this was agreed to.

However, the government opposed the cathedral plan, citing risks of public disorder, and demanded Franco's reinterment instead in a civic cemetery at El Pardo. Plans for the exhumation on 10 June were temporarily blocked by Spain's Supreme Court, which ruled that the move, which opinion polls suggest equally divides Spaniards, would damage "public interests incarnated in the state and its constitutional institutions".

In his Rome statement, Alessandro Gisotti said the position of the Vatican, which would not oppose the exhumation if ordered by competent authorities with agreement by interested parties, had been officially set out in a February letter to Carmen Calvo by its Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and confirmed subsequently by Spain's Bishops Conference.