ne_countries() with returnclass = "sf" crashes in CentOS 7 Linux

[John-R-Wallace-NOAA]

ne_countries() function in rnaturalearth version 0.2.0 under R version 4.0.1 on a Linux server:

Operating System: CentOS Linux 7 (Core) Architecture: x86-64

crashes:

  > world <- rnaturalearth::ne_countries(scale = "medium", returnclass = "sf")
 
  *** caught segfault ***
 address (nil), cause 'unknown'
 
 Traceback:
  1: CPL_crs_from_input(x)
  2: make_crs(x)
  3: st_crs.character(x@projargs)
  4: st_crs(x@projargs)
  5: st_crs.CRS(x@proj4string)
  6: st_crs(x@proj4string)
  7: append(lst, list(crs = st_crs(x@proj4string), precision = precision))
  8: do.call(st_sfc, append(lst, list(crs = st_crs(x@proj4string),     precision = precision)))
  9: structure(sfc, bbox = bb)
 10: handle_bbox(do.call(st_sfc, append(lst, list(crs = st_crs(x@proj4string),     precision = precision))), x)
 11: st_as_sfc.SpatialPolygons(sp::geometry(x), ...)
 12: st_as_sfc(sp::geometry(x), ...)
 13: st_as_sf.Spatial(x)
 14: st_as_sf(x)
 15: ne_as_sf(spdf[filter, ], returnclass)
 16: rnaturalearth::ne_countries(scale = "medium", returnclass = "sf")
 
 Possible actions:
 1: abort (with core dump, if enabled)
 2: normal R exit
 3: exit R without saving workspace
 4: exit R saving workspace

Using returnclass = "sp" works but is not what is needed.

Downloading directly from this repo (using the remotes package) did not help.