The new apostolic nuncio to Venezuela, Archbishop Alberto Ortega Martín, presented August 14 his letters of credence as the Holy See’s diplomatic envoy to Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.
Such an act is usually a formality, without much political significance, but in the complicated political landscape of Venezuela after the recent elections, it became one of the week's biggest news stories.
Many in the political opposition have read the event as an endorsement by the Holy See of Maduro, at a moment in which many in Venezuela and abroad believe the incumbent leader committed voter fraud in the recent presidential election, and then proceeded to violently repress protests, resulting in 24 deaths and 2,400 arrests.
While the timing of Archbishop Ortega’s arrival is objectively problematic, did the Holy See walk into a trap set up by the regime, or is it evidence of indifference by the Vatican that the act could be seen as an endorsement of Maduro?
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Born in Madrid in 1962, and ordained a priest of the Madrid archdiocese in 1990, the archbishop has previously served as nuncio to Iraq, Jordan, and Chile.
Ortega succeeded Archbishop Aldo Giordano, nuncio in Venezuela from 2013 to 2021, who died of Covid-19 a few months after starting to work as the new papal envoy to the European Union.
Before Giordano, the apostolic nuncio to Venezuela was now-Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State.
Now, Ortega seems to have started one of the most difficult jobs for a Vatican diplomat on a controversial foot — presenting himself formally three weeks after Nicolás Maduro allegedly committed fraud to win the presidential election in Venezuela.
The National Electoral Center (CNE) led mostly by party apparatchiks, announced that Maduro won with 54% of the vote. However, it did not publish the results from individual polling stations, as it usually does.
The opposition created a website onto which it uploaded 81% of the electoral tally certificates, collected by its own electoral witnesses, and these results gave the victory to Edmundo González, the opposition candidate, with 67% of the vote.
Even governments previously friendly to Maduro, such as Brazil and Colombia, have not recognized his victory and have asked for the full disclosure of the tally certificates, while many other countries have outright recognized González as the winner.
Therefore, the timing of the presentation of the new nuncio’s letters of credence has been widely seen as diplomatically significant, if not deliberately provocative.
The act was transmitted live on Venezuelan public television, and Ortega Martín was seen smiling alongside Maduro while exchanging gifts and presenting his credentials.
Although most political parties in Venezuela did not say anything against Ortega Martín or the Vatican, many local commentators criticized the move, accusing Pope Francis of being a collaborationist with the Venezuelan regime or claiming the timing showed the pope was sympathetic to communism.
The Church is perhaps the most popular institution in Venezuela, and the bishops are widely respected for their strong stance in favor of human dignity and freedom in the country throughout recent years of political instability. Public perception of the Vatican and Pope Francis, however, has proven to be a different story.
Public commentary in Venezuela often accuses the Vatican and Francis of falling into ‘both side-ism’ in responding to political unrest and oppression in the country, appearing to treat the opposition and the Maduro dictatorship as having an almost equal fault in the ongoing Venezuelan crisis.
That Francis is seen as having a friendly relationship with many left-wing political figures in the continent who support Maduro - such as the president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, and the former president of Cuba, Raúl Castro - has not helped the papal public image in Venezuela, either.
Francis’ own public pronouncements on Venezuela have been seen as reserved and sparse, rarely referring to the human rights violations in the country, while the Vatican has made several attempts to serve as a mediator between the regime and the opposition in recent years — all of which have failed.
After the first major series of protests against the Maduro regime in 2014, there was dialogue between the opposition and the government; Pope Francis sent a letter to the participants to open the talks, and the apostolic nuncio served as one of the mediators, but the talks came to nothing.
The 2018 presidential elections were another crisis point, and were similarly condemned by the international community – and by the Venezuelan bishops’ conference – for their lack of transparency and electoral guarantees.
As 2019 began, the National Assembly – which was controlled by the opposition – declared the presidency vacant and appointed the assembly’s own president, Juan Guaidó, as President of the Republic, following the provisions of the Venezuelan constitution — with several countries recognizing him as the legitimate election winner.
But while many countries officially recognized Guaidó as the rightful president, Cardinal Parolin said the Vatican was taking a position of “positive neutrality,” a stance which was widely criticized in and out of the country at the time.
Even some local Catholic leaders criticized the Vatican’s position, with the late Fr. José Virtuoso SJ, then rector of the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (the largest Catholic university in the country) saying that he “would like the Pope to have a stronger, clearer position.”
Official neutrality notwithstanding, the Vatican soon began to show that it doubted the good faith of the Maduro regime.
Maduro wrote a letter to Pope Francis in early 2019 asking for another round of mediation by the Vatican to provide a way out of the political crisis in the country.
A letter of response signed by Pope Francis was leaked, in which he pointedly addressed Maduro as “Sir,” not “President,” and said that government undertakings from the previous negotiations — such as the opening of a humanitarian channel and the calling of free elections — had not been fulfilled.
However, the failure of several rounds of Church-brokered negotiations had already shaded public perception of Pope Francis and the Vatican in the country.
While the Vatican has been at times accused of being too easily lured into phony dialogue with the regime, Francis actually has access to a wealth of high-level expertise on the situation in the country. His Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, served as the nuncio in Venezuela from 2009 to 2013. The current sostituto, essentially papal chief of staff, is the Venezuelan Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, and the superior of the pope’s own Society of Jesus, Fr. Arturo Sosa, also comes from Venezuela.
His main advisors on the ground are retired Cardinals Baltazar Porras of Caracas and Diego Padrón of Cumaná, who recently wrote a leaked letter calling for “civic resistance” against Maduro.
And although Peña Parra has not made many public statements about his home country or Maduro, those who know him personally say there is no love lost between him and the Venezuelan dictatorship.
Why, then, many in the country ask, would Francis remain relatively silent about the national state of affairs, and seemingly allow for the Venezuelan dictatorship to use the Church for PR purposes, as it did with the formal reception of the nuncio?
For many, Francis’ foreign policy often seems to take an approach of subsidiary, leaving the harder statements and the internal political mediation to the local hierarchy.
Although Francis seems to take a more diplomatic tone against Maduro than the Venezuelan episcopacy, he has said in the past that the “voice of the Venezuelan bishops is also my voice” and, perhaps tellingly, no Venezuelan bishop has publicly criticized Francis’ approach. Instead, they seem to see the Vatican’s more studied stance as complementary to their own.
Another issue at stake is that the Holy See will be concerned with preventing the Church’s situation in Venezuela from deteriorating by provoking the regime, with many fearing an escalation in state action against clergy as has been seen in Nicaragua.
A priest in the city of Maracaibo, Fr. Lenín Naranjo, had to go into hiding after participating in an opposition protest. Last week, in the city of Machiques, south of Maracaibo, Fr. Elvis Cabarca, was arrested after leading a rosary prayer at an opposition protest. He was set free a few hours later.
Stronger statements by Pope Francis would likely do little to tilt the balance on the ground for the opposition, but could quite possibly increase persecution against local priests — though the need for Vatican nuance is not necessarily appreciated by the general public in Venezuela.
Another issue at play for the Vatican is the ongoing difficulty in appointing bishops. A political concordat between the Venezuelan state and the Vatican, signed in 1965, requires that before the Vatican appoints a diocesan bishop, the Holy See “shall send the candidate's name to the President of the Republic, so that he may state whether he has any objections of a general political nature to oppose the appointment.”
“In case of such objections, the Holy See will indicate the name of another candidate.”
The result of the agreement is that the Maduro regime actually has significant power to block local episcopal appointments — something the Vatican has made some recent progress in working through.
About a month ago, Venezuela saw appointments in three of the four largest sees in the country, including Caracas, the capital and primatial see, but the country still has a slew of smaller vacant dioceses.
That context made it even more urgent for Archbishop Ortega Martín to formally start his work as nuncio in Venezuela, and likely played into the timing of his official reception, even at the cost of the Vatican being seen as somehow endorsing the Venezuelan dictatorship three weeks after an election widely regarded as fraudulent and amidst the violent suppression of pro democracy demonstrations.
“This was clearly Maduro’s intention,” political analyst Enderson Sequera told The Pillar. “But, what options did the Church have?”
“Not giving the letters of credence to Maduro, waiting for him to recognize the result of a new president-elect who would be sworn in in six months? Not recognizing Maduro even though there is no formal instance where it seems steps are being taken to recognize the [real] results?” he added.
It is possible the Venezuelan government delayed accepting Ortega Martín’s letters of credence before the election in order to present the ceremony as an implied endorsement of the regime after the election. But, given that Archbishop Ortega would have to present the letters at some point in order to start his work as nuncio, it is questionable what use delaying the event would serve.
While some have said that the Holy See should have waited longer to see if the tensions in the country lowered, even if the opposition’s supposed electoral victory was recognized by the regime, Maduro would still be in office as a lame-duck president until the inauguration of his successor. With things as they are, and Maduro committed to staying in power, delaying the nuncio’s formal start in office until the new year could have further antagonized the regime, and would still be presented as an endorsement after Maduro’s swearing-in in early 2025.
Despite the obvious problems around the timing and presentation of his arrival as nuncio, and the unpopular history of “positive neutrality” by the Vatican in recent years, the reality is that Ortega Martín and the Holy See were in an impossible position – with no obvious advantage to delaying his formal presentation.
