Perhaps nothing so underscores, highlights, marks in red capitals the idiosyncratic and irrational judgments of Jorge Bergoglio than his handling of the Venezuelan tragedy - in its way, the South American equivalent of the Syrian tragedy in the Middle East, for going on and on without a resolution while the suffering of the Venezuelan people goes from bad to worse to intolerable...
Pope Francis: Playing Pontius Pilate
in the Venezuelan tragedy
May 11, 2017
The number of dead is now around forty, the wounded number a thousand. It is the price of a month of popular demonstrations, even of only women dressed in white, against the presidency of Nicolás Maduro, in a Venezuela on the brink.
A Venezuela in which a new factor has recently taken the field, and this is the growing, systematic aggression against properties and personnel of the Catholic Church.
Vatican sources - starting with
L'Osservatore Romano - as detailed as they are in covering the developments of the crisis, are sparing with news about aggression against the Church.
There is not a single reference to this even in the letter that Pope Francis wrote on May 5 to
the Venezuelan bishops, who on the same day published a vibrant declaration against the announcement made by Maduro of a “constitutional convention” to reform the state for his use and consumption, meaning in practice - the bishops charge - to impose “a totalitarian, militaristic, violent, oppressive police state system” even worse than the “21st-century socialism” set up by Maduro’s predecesssor, Hugo Chávez, a leader still praised by many leftist populist groups in Latin America and elsewhere.
For Sunday, May 21, the bishop have called a “Day of prayer for peace in Venezuela.” But meanwhile, here is an initial survey of the aggression against the Catholic Church, published by the Venezuelan journalist Marinellys Tremamunno in
La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana of April 2:
> Venezuela, inizia la persecuzione della Chiesa
www.lanuovabq.it/it/articoli-venezuela-inizia-la-persecuzione-della-chiesa-1...
Nothing is off-limits.
- Death threats and blasphemous graffiti on the walls of churches. - Masses interrupted by incursions of Chavist “colectivos.”
- Caracas Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino silenced during the homily and forced to leave the church.
- The venerated image of the Nazarene in the cathedral of Valencia smeared with human excrement.
- The chanceries of the dioceses of Guarenas and Maracay plundered. - - Thefts of consecrated hosts in Maracaibo.
- The headquarters of the episcopal conference devastated. One priest killed in Guayana and another abducted.
But it doesn’t end there. On May 4, the doors of the cathedral of Caracas were damaged and its walls were covered with graffiti in praise of the government. That same day, a crowd of students from the Catholic university marched on the episcopal residence, as a sign of solidarity.
Because by now the bishops too are an “enemy” against whom the Maduro presidency is lashing out with vehemence. Especially after the failure at the outset of the attempt at mediation between the government and opposition groups supported at the end of last year by pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio through his envoys:
> Venezuela, a Nation on the Brink of the Abyss (7.11.2017)
chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1351406bdc4.html?eng=y
The stance adopted by the Vatican authorities to foster a reconciliation among the parties was that expressed by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, formerly the nuncio in Caracas before his appointment as secretary of state, in the letter he sent to the parties in mid-December, “in the name and at the behest of the Holy Father.”
In it, he identified four conditions for the opening of dialogue:
- humanitarian channels to guarantee the population food and medicine;
- restitution to the parliament (in which the opposition groups are in the majority) of the prerogatives stipulated by the constitution;
- the liberation of political prisoners;
- new free elections.
But the Maduro presidency has not wanted to meet any of these conditions. On the contrary, it has made additional decisions that have ramped up the repression.
And Pope Francis has been punctually informed about everything. Also through direct conversations with Venezuelan bishops, including the president of the episcopal conference, Cardinal Baltazar Porras Cardozo, archbishop of Mérida, who met with the pope in Rome on April 27, on the eve of his journey to Egypt.
So one can understand the disappointment and anger of many Venezuelans, including bishops, when two days later, on April 29, during the customary press conference on the flight back to Rome from Cairo, Francis said this about the crisis in Venezuela:
“There was an effort by the Holy See, but this did not produce results, because the proposals were not accepted, or were diluted with a ‘yes, yes, but no, no.’ We all know the difficult situation in Venezuela, which is a country that I love very much. I know that now there is insistence - I believe on the part of the four former presidents [of Colombia, Spain, Panama, and Santo Domingo - editor’s note] - to restore this facilitation. I believe that conditions have already been presented. Very clear conditions. But part of the opposition does not want this. Because it is curious, the opposition is divided. And, on the other hand, it appears that the conflicts are intensifying all the time. There is something astir, I am informed about it, but it is very much up in the air. [Excuse me, Hugo Chavez died on March 4, 2013, and since then, things have only grown worse and worse for Venezuela. What do you mean 'something is astir... and very much in the air'???] But everything that can be done for Venezuela must be done. With the necessary guarantees. If not, we are playing ‘tintìn pirulero’ [where everyone wants to get out of paying the pledge - editor’s note], snd this is no good.” [TYPICAL EMPTY BERGOGLIO RHETORIC!]
The next day, Sunday, April 30, speaking at the “Regina Caeli,” Francis moderated somewhat the dismissive words he spoke on the plane against the Venezuelan opposition groups, practically blamed for being the ones who ruined the agreement.
He addressed
“a heartfelt appeal to the government and to all the components of society that every further form of violence be avoided, human rights be respected, and negotiated solutions be sought for the grave humanitarian, social, political, and economic crisis that is devastating the population.” [More namby-pamby platitudinizing! He's been pope since 10 days after Chavez died, and what has he really done about it? How has Parolin helped in any way despite the fact that he was Nuncio to Venezuela before he became Bergoglio's Secretary of State? What does it say that the first Latin American pope has been so ineffectual and virtually unheeded in seeking to mediate a major national crisis in the continent's potentially richest nation where most of the people have been starving for years?... And BTW, he still said not a word about the stepped-up persecution against the Church in Venezuela! How do you explain that blatant omission?] But this correction has by no means calmed the waters.
Twelve hours later, in fact,
the opposition groups wrote a letter to the pope in which “not divided but unanimous” they said that they agree to the conditions set by Cardinal Parolin - unlike the government, which has always rejected them - and indicated free elections as the only way out of the crisis.
The fact is that between Pope Francis and the Venezuelan bishops, concerning the crisis that is ravaging the country, there is an abyss. The bishops stand with the population that is protesting against the dictatorship, and are respected and listened to as authoritative guides. While Bergoglio is judged on a par with Pontius Pilate, unforgivably reckless with Maduro and Chavism, in addition to being incomprehensibly reticent on the victims of the repression and on the aggression that is striking the Church itself.
It is a fracture analogous to the one produced in Bolivia, where President Evo Morales has his biggest critics in the bishops, and instead a tireless supporter in the pope. Or that which was seen during the pope’s journey to Cuba, where Francis did not conceal his admiration for the Castro brothers, while not dignifying the dissidents with so much as a word or a glance.
Many see the root of the pope’s behavior in his invincible populist sentiment, typically Latin American, brought to light once again in recent days by one of the leading scholars of the phenomenon, Professor Loris Zanatta of the University of Bologna, in a long essay in
Il Foglio of May 8:
“Reality, Bergoglio repeats, is greater than ideas. And yet, seeing his silence on the social drama in Venezuela, or in the country that with Chávez had set itself up as a model of anti-liberalism by invoking the stereotypes dear to the pope, the thought arises that he too, like many, prefers his ideas to reality." [Yup, that's Bergoglio, alright, at his most hubristic I-alone-know-right manner!]