It's more the other way round, certain countries refuse to have "formal" contacts with the Holy See. Namely China, Vietnam, and North Korea. The Vatican wants to have diplomatic relations with as many nations, countries, states as as possible. The duties of an Apostolic Nuncio are to be "ambassadors" to the various governments and papal legates to the local Churches. It's that second part that causes the trouble as part of the legate's duties are to see to it that personal and property rights of the Church, Catholics, Christians , and in fact, according to official statements from the Vatican, "all peoples," are respected. Certain countries see that as "an interference in internal affairs." China says first the Vatican must break relations with Taiwan and recognize China as the only legitimate government, second, China's internal affairs cannot be interfered with, using religion as a pretext. North Korea feels that governmental massacres of Xians is a purely internal affair. It should be noted that the US does not recognize N.Korea as a legitimate government either. Heck the Vatican even has formal contact with the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, and they don't even have a real WHERE to have contact in at with. Some of that may be out of date, the most recent info I got was from 2000, lots of things have changed since then. For example I used to be a Know-it-all that would answer any question, any time, whether I knew the answer or not. Now, well, now the Vatican will not even have formal contact with me. Shoot it don't have to be formal, the Nuncio can wear his oldest cassock and sandals, I'll wear my jeans, work shirt and boots. We'll sit around and drink beer from the cans and eat boiled crawdads from a bucket. Dang! He'll have 'informal' talks with Godless commies and he won't suck mudbugs with me? OK, I'll rent a tuxedo!