Tensions between the Church and state in Venezuela have reached a new high after the canonizations of the first Venezuelan saints earlier this month.
Priests and bishops are reporting an increase in threats from the regime, while several Masses of thanksgiving following the canonizations have seen government interference.
The relationship between Church and state has become so strained that observers have speculated that the country could be following the path of Nicaragua, a country with an ideologically similar authoritarian regime, where many bishops and priests have faced exile in recent years.
But while such an outcome is possible, there is also reason to think that the Venezuelan regime could count the cost of cutting ties with the Church completely to be too high – particularly given the Church’s potential as an intermediary between Venezuela and the United States.
October 19 marked the canonization of José Gregorio Hernández and Carmen Rendiles, the first saints from Venezuela.
The canonization weekend was tense, with the Venezuelan government making a clear bid to score political points by claiming support in the Vatican and even from Pope Leo himself.
But when that plan failed to produce the desired optics, the government shifted to a more hostile approach toward the Church.
Last week, a Mass of Thanksgiving for the canonizations in Caracas, expected to draw more than 50,000 participants, was cancelled.
An official statement from the archdiocese said the cancellation was due to lack of space and security reasons. But sources close to the situation told The Pillar that the Mass was cancelled because the Venezuelan regime was planning to send thousands of government supporters to turn the Mass into a rally for President Nicolás Maduro.
On Oct. 26, Cardinal Baltazar Porras, Archbishop Emeritus of Caracas, complained on social media that he had been barred from travelling to Isnotú, the hometown of Saint José Gregorio Hernández, where he had been scheduled to celebrate Mass for the new saint’s feast day.
Porras said Venezuelan authorities prevented him from boarding his flight from Caracas to the city of Valera, near Isnotú. When he boarded a private flight, he said, the pilot was forced to land in a different city because authorities said Valera’s airport was closed due to poor weather conditions.
Porras said he decided to continue the last leg of the trip by land, but members of the armed forces prevented him from doing so, forcing him instead to return to Caracas.
Threats against clergy have also been on the rise since the canonization.
On Oct. 24, Fr. Juan Manuel León of the Archdiocese of Calabozo received death threats when his parish was vandalized with graffiti that said “damned priest, we’ll kill you” and “terrorist, fascist, thief.”
Various sources in Venezuela have told The Pillar that dozens of priests and bishops in Venezuela have received death or prison threats from government officials or supporters in the past week.
The heightened conflict with the Catholic Church comes as Venezuela faces triple-digit percentages of inflation, the looming threat of American warships, and widespread poverty.
The government had clearly hoped to use the canonizations as propaganda. Maduro had claimed that Pope Francis did not even know who Hernández was until he introduced the saint’s story to him.
Many in Venezuela were worried that the regime would use the unveiling of a mosaic of Our Lady of Coromoto, patroness of Venezuela, in the Vatican gardens, as an opportunity to claim support in the Vatican and among the Venezuelan bishops.
In the end, only one Venezuelan bishop was present at the unveiling, and the most senior Vatican official there was Archbishop Emilio Nappa, secretary general of the Vatican governorate.
Additionally, both Vatican officials and the country’s local bishops seem to have been emboldened in speaking out against the regime.
In an Oct. 17 event in Rome commemorating the canonizations, Cardinal Porras said that the situation in Venezuela was “morally unacceptable [including] the growth of poverty, [and] militarization as a form of government to incite violence.”
Porras also reiterated a recent call by the Venezuelan bishops to release the more than 800 political prisoners in Venezuela.
And in an Oct. 20 thanksgiving Mass for the canonization of the first two Venezuelan saints, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin offered one of the most scathing criticisms of the Venezuelan regime by a Vatican official in recent times, with the government’s official delegation sitting in the front row.
Parolin called upon the government to “listen to the words of the Lord, who calls you to open unjust prisons, to break the chains of oppression, to set the oppressed free, to break all chains.”
This bold statement from Parolin is particularly significant, as he was widely believed to be adamantly in favor of strategic silence with regards to Venezuela, the approach that Pope Francis largely adopted during his pontificate.
But for the Church direct confrontation of the Venezuelan regime, by both the local bishops and the Vatican, comes with risks.
Ever since the 2024 presidential election — in which international observers say the Venezuelan dictatorship committed fraud — the regime has intensified its persecution of the opposition, blocking social media, forcing thousands in exile, and arresting people who criticized the government on WhatsApp.
The Venezuelan bishops, who have been widely praised for their defense of human rights in the country, mostly resorted to silence amid the wave of repression that followed the election.
The Catholic Church is widely respected in Venezuela, and the political costs of imprisoning clergy and persecuting the Church are high. When the local hierarchy supported widespread protests against the government in 2014 and 2017, the regime was careful to moderate its response against the bishops, not wanting to sever its relationship with Pope Francis.
But facing new criticism from Church leaders after its failed bid to garner Vatican support at the recent canonizations, it seems the government may choose to crack down on the Church in order to send a message.
How far the regime is willing to go remains to be seen. Some observers are already warning that the devolving situation could turn Venezuela into the next Nicaragua, where a systematic crackdown against the Church has led much of the clergy into exile.
While that outcome is a real possibility, it is far from a certainty. And there may be an unexpected factor protecting the Church in Venezuela from a full-blown persecution: the United States military.
The growing presence of American warships off the Venezuelan coast has left the country in a state of uncertainty. And the possibility of U.S. bombings on Venezuelan drug and military facilities could destabilize the regime.
In such a scenario, the Church in Venezuelan could become an essential player.
In some regions of Venezuela overtaken by local gangs or guerrillas, Church officials already serve as unofficial intermediaries.
In a scenario where Maduro accepts to leave power due to internal and external pressure, the Church is perhaps the only local institution that could serve as a guarantor of an agreement between the opposition, the US, neighboring countries, the Venezuelan government, and the Venezuelan military.
In fact, when Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, was briefly deposed in a military coup in April 2002, it was two Venezuelan bishops who accompanied him to a plane to leave Caracas as a guarantee he wouldn’t be killed by the coup plotters. Chávez returned to power two days later after the coup failed.
An intensifying persecution of the Catholic Church may be an unwise move for the Venezuelan government if it may find itself relying on the Church to navigate conflict with the United States in the near future.
As the tense situation between the U.S. and Venezuela unfolds in the coming days and weeks, the Church in Venezuela may find its own future caught in the balance.