Underlying political tensions have surfaced among Venezuelans in Rome celebrating the recent canonization of the country’s first two saints, José Gregorio Hernández and Mother Carmen Rendiles Martínez.
A Venezuelan government delegation led by Carmen Meléndez, mayor of Caracas, and hundreds of pilgrims from the Latin American nation were among the 70,000 people who attended the Oct. 19 canonization ceremony led by Pope Leo XIV in St. Peter’s Square.
However, in the days prior to Venezuelans converging at the Vatican to celebrate their country’s newly-proclaimed saints, reports of evident discord between government officials and citizens regarding President Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian regime have also emerged.
Over the weekend, activists connected to the opposition political movement Vente Venezuela, led by 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, shared posts on Instagram highlighting their cause to free hundreds of men and women political prisoners.
The activists carried posters with photos of men and women detained by Maduro’s government with the slogan “Release All Political Prisoners” at an Oct. 18 protest in Piazza del Risorgimento, a public square near the Vatican, and at the Oct. 19 canonization ceremony held in St. Peter’s Square.
The Venezuelan government’s political agenda in Rome had also been called into question by the media in the days preceding the canonizations of the country’s first saints, with critics implying their presence at the Vatican is an attempt to project a positive image of national pride and unity under the Maduro regime.
Last week, a scuffle broke out between Venezuelan Vatican journalist Edgar Beltrán and Venezuelan businessman Ricardo Cisneros, a member of the Venezuelan government delegation present at the canonization, at an event held at the Lateran University of Rome to honor the two new saints.
During the Oct. 17 event, Beltrán’s interview with the Vatican’s substitute for the Secretariat of State, Archbishop Edgar Robinson Peña Parra, was interrupted by Cisneros after the prelate was asked about the Maduro government’s “apparent politicization” of the canonizations, according to Catholic news outlet The Pillar.
Undemocratic measures and human rights violations in Venezuela have continued to garner increasing international attention, particularly since January when Maduro was sworn in for a third term after contested presidential election results.
Meanwhile, earlier this month opposition leader Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work in “promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela” and for “her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
On Monday, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin in a Mass of thanksgiving for the two saints held inside St. Peter’s Basilica urged Venezuelans to respect human rights and “create spaces for encounter and democratic coexistence.”
“Only in this way, dear Venezuela, will you be able to respond to your calling for peace, if you build it on the foundations of justice, truth, freedom, and love,” the cardinal said in his Oct. 20 homily.
This story was updated on Oct. 21 at 5 a.m. ET to correct the location of the Oct. 18 “Release All Political Prisoners” protest.
This article was originally published by CNA.
