Venezuela’s socialist government is on the edge of collapse. President Donald Trump has deployed 10,000 troops to the Caribbean as part of a buildup involving eight warships, 10 F-35 fighter jets, missile-loaded drones, a nuclear-powered attack submarine and a floating base for special operations forces. The Trump administration’s official stance is that this buildup is part of its “war against narco-terrorism,” yet anonymous officials have told multiple news outlets that the real goal is the ouster of President Nicolás Maduro.
President Trump has indicated that he is looking at the possibility of ground strikes in Venezuela, prompting a defiant Maduro to mobilize troops along the coast. Yet, despite this posturing, Maduro knows his troops do not stand a chance against the United States military. So he is reaching out to the Catholic Church for help.
Speaking during his weekly television program on October 8, Maduro assured the Venezuelan people that he had written personally to Pope Leo xiv, asking for the Vatican’s mediation to safeguard “peace and stability” in the country. Yet Maduro’s hope that the pope will help preserve his socialist regime may be misplaced.
Just days after Maduro announced that he had written to the pope, the Vatican officially canonized its first two Venezuelan saints: José Gregorio Hernández and Carmen Rendiles. Maduro and his regime were initially overjoyed by this news, seeing it as a sign of good relations between the Vatican and Venezuela. Then Maduro saw the outpouring of support for figures like Cardinal Baltazar Porras, archbishop emeritus of Caracas.
Since Cardinal Porras has been a prominent and persistent critic of Maduro’s socialist regime, the Venezuelan government canceled a large thanksgiving mass for the canonizations and then prevented Cardinal Porras from traveling to the western part of the country. Maduro falsely accused Cardinal Porras of “conspiring” to prevent the canonization of St. José Gregorio Hernández so that he did not look anti-Catholic. But it is plain that there is serious tension between the Maduro regime and Venezuela’s Catholic hierarchy.
In fact, the split between Maduro and the Catholics after Pope Leo’s canonization announcement was so inevitable that it seems likely that Leo used the announcement to stir up opposition against Maduro. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul ii worked together to bring down the Soviet Union, so President Trump and Pope Leo may be coordinating their moves to bring down Maduro. President Trump recently authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela, so the fact that the Vatican chose to canonize its first Venezuelan saints this year may be significant.
Leo is stirring up pro-Catholic sentiment in Venezuela, while Trump is sanctioning the socialist regime persecuting Venezuela’s Catholic hierarchy. These moves may mean regime change.
In the short term, ousting Maduro from office would likely benefit both the U.S. and the Roman Catholic Church. Maduro’s Cartel of the Suns is a major source of drug trafficking into the U.S., which President Trump would like to see cut off. Yet a pro-Catholic Venezuela could still turn on America.
In fact, Bible prophecy indicates this will happen.
In Revelation 17 and 18, God labels the German-led, Vatican-influenced empire currently emerging in Europe as “Babylon the great.” In the corresponding Old Testament prophecies of Isaiah 23 and Ezekiel 27, this empire appears under the name of Tyre, the most powerful trading center of the ancient Mediterranean.
Based on these scriptures, the late Herbert W. Armstrong long predicted that the alliance between Europe and South America would grow extremely strong. The most significant factors that will cement this alliance are the Roman Catholic religion and the Spanish language. This union, however, will not be a union of equals: The Latin American countries will again become vassal states to a Catholic-dominated Holy Roman Empire.
As the July 1965 Plain Truth foretold, “Flowing across the Atlantic to feed the hungry furnaces of the Ruhr and the other industrial complexes of Europe will come the rich mineral wealth of Latin America.”
Germany and the Vatican are building a transcontinental alliance that will ultimately include 10 European kings, a loyal network of Latin American vassal states and an anti-Iranian alliance of Arabic regimes.
With its left arm, this Vatican-dominated conglomerate will reach down southward and eastward into the Middle East to conquer the Holy City of Jerusalem. Then, with its right arm, this “Holy” Roman Empire will reach southward and westward across the Atlantic to take control of Latin America and besiege the U.S.
Read Chapter 7 of editor in chief Gerald Flurry’s book, Isaiah’s End-Time Vision, for more information on the Holy Roman Empire’s attempts to besiege and conquer the United States.