In a letter to the bishops of Venezuela, which was leaked over the weekend, two Venezuelan cardinals called for “civic disobedience and resistance” against the regime of President Nicolás Maduro.
“Principles cannot be negotiated,” said Cardinal Baltazar Porras, emeritus of Caracas, and Cardinal Diego Padrón, emeritus of Cumaná.
They said that the Church has “the moral duty to support and sustain just initiatives against abuses with civic disobedience and resistance.”
The July 31 letter, which was published Sunday evening by local Venezuelan media, denounced what the cardinals described as “evident fraud” by Maduro in the July 28 presidential election.
Maduro’s victory in the election has been internationally denounced as a manipulated result. The opposition claims that its candidate, Edmundo González, won the election with 68% of the vote - and has published over 80% of the country’s voting station tally sheets on a website to back its claims. The regime has not published full voting station results.
The contested election has prompted widespread protests throughout Venezuela. The government has responded to the protests with severe crackdowns. Some 20 people have been killed and more than 1,000 jailed in the last week.
The cardinals’ letter condemned the government response to the protests, while also voicing concern that the Church may soon face serious persecution if its leaders continue to speak out.
The letter warned of the possibility of a “Nicaraguan-style government” in the future. Nonetheless, the cardinals said, the Church cannot be silent in the face of injustice.
“We are not and we should not be neutral,” they said, speaking of a duty to “prophetically denounce, even if it’s a risk, the injustices, and proclaim our principles and values, pastorally being together with the people with solidarity.”
“This is not an easy task, but it is necessary,” they continued.
They rejected the possibility of the Church being a member of a dialogue or mediation effort with the government, “under the premise of acknowledging the proclamation of the results [by the regime].” The Church has previously acted as a mediator during other large protests in the past.
“This, for us, is inadmissible because it would mean to ignore the evident fraud, the manifest usurpation, and denying the popular will expressed unequivocally,” they said.
While the letter was originally meant to be sent confidentially to the Venezuelan bishops, it was leaked to the local press a few days after it was written.
In a statement sent to local priests and laypeople, and accessed by The Pillar, Porras acknowledged that he and Padrón had written the letter, but stressed that “it was confidential and unpublishable.”
“Unfortunately, someone leaked it and now it is public,” he said, adding that “[i]t was meant to offer a broader outlook and as an insight for an eventual statement or position taking.”
“Now, it should be a tool to be analyzed and clarify and open paths of peace. These confusing situations demand discernment and serenity in front of what we are living,” concluded Porras, who has long been a well-known critic of Maduro.
“The letter is a very clear document, that I think represents the sentiment of many in Venezuela, and especially of the clergy. It speaks very clearly of the fraud and the fact that there is a new president-elect that is not being recognized,” a Venezuelan priest told The Pillar.
A Vatican source told The Pillar that the cardinals wrote the letter on their own initiative. They did not consult with the Holy Father or anyone else in the Vatican to write the letter.
However, both Padrón and Porras are known to be close to Pope Francis, and Francis has repeatedly claimed that he supports the Venezuelan bishops amid the crisis.
The pope spoke about the crisis in Venezuela in his Sunday Angelus, calling “all parties to seek the truth, to exercise restraint, to avoid any kind of violence, to settle disputes through dialogue, to have at heart the true good of the people and not partisan interests.”
The president of the Bishop’s Conference, Jesús González de Zárate, told The Pillar he did not have comments about the letter. He said the “bishops are following the situation closely, and… will make another statement in due course.”
