Caracas Chronicles

Pope Francis encapsulated many of the big issues of these convoluted times. As the first Jesuit and Latin American head of the Vatican, he was someone from “the Global South” who suddenly had a worldwide influence. Like Barack Obama or Justin Trudeau or Gabriel Boric (and maybe like Claudia Sheinbaum) he was supposed to be a revolutionary, or at least a reformer. He actually tried to change things on several issues, but in the end, as El País pointed out this morning, Francis enraged the conservatives for doing too much and disappointed the progressives for doing too little. 

His papacy was polarizing, deeply imbued by politics, and sparked the return of Vatican-centered intrigues to streaming platforms and cinemas. When his tenure began, they said Francis was lukewarm regarding the military dictatorship in Argentina, but also that he was a communist. Everyone expected many things from him. And history’s twisted sense of humor decided that he would leave the scene by granting his last audience to a powerful, rich American converted to Catholicism, who despises Europe and seems to crave a reactionary theocracy: J. D. Vance.

The same combination of distrust, hope and pugnacity around the Argentinian Pope took place in Venezuela. Many people assumed that when Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was elected Pope, twelve years ago, he would be a fierce ally for their cause. Being a Latin American, the Venezuelan opposition hoped he would have an interest and an understanding of our situation that Benedict XVI, a German conservative theologian, would never have. In fact, Francis’ first trip as a Pope was to Brazil: it made sense that the region would be his priority. At the same time, the Maduro regime might have expected a friendly relationship with Francis, with him being a cleric close to the old Peronista left, even if not the most amicable with the Kirchners. Back home, expectations grew even higher when a Venezuelan priest, Arturo Sosa, was appointed Superior General of the Society of Jesus. Like fellow Jesuit Jorge Bergoglio, he was the first Latin American to assume the role. With a Venezuelan leading the order and an Argentine at the head of the Church, many believed that Venezuela’s failed socialist experiment would find its way onto the Vatican’s agenda.

What happened was neither chicha nor limonada, something in between. After many failed negotiation attempts between the Maduro regime and the opposition, Pope Francis rather acted like someone who was saving himself for a moment that never came, one where he would be able to broker a solution to a political crisis between two parties willing to come to an agreement—but as we know, Maduro & Co. are not great with agreements. After the Vatican’s involvement with Miraflores and the MUD in 2016, the Pope may have concluded that his contributions to democratization in Venezuela were limited as long as Maduro retained power. The opposition, holding a majority in the National Assembly, had pinned its hopes on a recall referendum to remove Maduro, and the Holy See expressed support for the vote to be held as soon as possible. Both the opposition and the Maduro regime had requested the Church’s involvement in negotiations around this eventual non-event, which was blocked in October for absurd reasons. That obstruction became one of the clearest signs of what the Maduro regime was morphing into.

Pope Francis’s death, seven hours after the end of Easter, leaves a few unanswered questions about his relationship with Venezuela. Could he have done more? Did he actually want to?

On December 1st, 2016, Cardinal Pietro Parolin—then Vatican Secretary of State, and previously the Apostolic Nuncio to Venezuela—issued a public letter outlining the Church’s conditions for continued engagement in the talks. These included measures to alleviate food shortages (with the proposed support of humanitarian NGO Caritas), the establishment of an electoral timetable, the full restoration of the National Assembly’s powers, and the expedited release of political prisoners. Days later, Diosdado Cabello fired back, saying Parolin should mind his own business: “Show some respect. We don’t interfere in the Vatican’s internal affairs. We don’t get involved with priests accused of pedophilia. That’s something you need to sort out yourselves.”

“He was here, spent about two years actively siding with the opposition, so his attitude doesn’t surprise us at all,” Diosdado then said about Parolin. “He was a militant. He attended right-wing meetings while serving as Nuncio. We can’t expect anything different from someone so full of hatred toward the country.”

A few months later, in March 2017, Maduro’s abuses and the Supreme Tribunal’s overreach triggered a constitutional crisis and a deadly wave of protests that exposed the former to the world as a dictator. After watching its conditions go unmet, the Holy See withdrew from direct involvement in Venezuela’s crisis, in contrast to usual suspects like Zapatero and Ernesto Samper, and actors like Norway, Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil.

In the years that followed, Vatican statements about events in Venezuela always came short in the eyes of anti-chavistas, and many observers failed to understand why the worsening humanitarian emergency and the escalating human rights crisis didn’t push Francis to embrace a harder stance against the Maduro regime, which was so hostile to conservative clerics like Caracas archbishop Ignacio Velasco. As the 2024 election fraud unfolded, Pope Francis called chavismo and opposition “to find the truth”, to resolve disputes through dialogue and to set aside partisan interests. In the meantime, president elect Edmundo González did not find refuge at the Apostolic Nunciature in Caracas as he rushed to escape chavista persecution. Later, when asked about Maduro, Francis did warn that “dictatorships don’t serve anyone and end up badly” but, as with several other states, the idea of Edmundo’s victory was already dying down.

You could say that Pope Francis lost a popularity contest to a strong predecessor: John Paul II. The Polish Pope went to Venezuela twice, in 1985 and 1996. The first visit was a frenzy, a Popemania, while the second one lacked luster and impact in a country where inflation, political apathy and pessimism were infecting everybody. Pope Francis never visited Venezuela, against all hopes, and for some Venezuelan conservatives, where Catholicism is strong, he betrayed the legacy of John Paul II, a civilian hero in the struggle against communism.

Pope Francis went so far as to call the Ortega-Murillo regime a grotesque dictatorship, yet he wasn’t as vocal about Venezuela.

Pope Francis’s death, seven hours after the end of Easter, leaves a few unanswered questions about his relationship with Venezuela. Could he have done more? Did he actually want to?

Answering these must first acknowledge that these are not the simpler times of John Paul II, whose history fit the manichean logic of the Cold War and benefitted from the chances then existing to build consensus and spread big, assuring certainties over great parts of society. Francis, instead, rose to Saint Peter’s throne in a fragmented and irate world, where the Catholic Church has lost a great deal of its ancient influence. Across the Americas, Evangelical confessions have taken millions of believers from the old hands of the Catholic church, and in Venezuela, a fraction of them built a solid alliance with chavismo, where many high level figures are Evangelical. Maybe Francis wanted to protect what’s left of the Venezuelan Church and its institutions from Chávez and Maduro—from Caritas and the Fe y Alegría network of schools and radio stations, to Universidad Catolica Andres Bello and local parishes in remote towns. Maybe he just calculated that it wasn’t worth investing time, resources and prestige in a country where the regime was so strong and the opposition so weak, and where the Vatican’s clout is more limited than in more Catholic countries like Colombia or Mexico.

More specifically, perhaps the Pope sought to avoid anything that resembled the situation of the Catholic clergy in Nicaragua, where the crackdown has been so severe that at least 19 priests have been arrested and expelled from the country, and regime agents systematically monitor masses and sermons. Pope Francis went so far as to call the Ortega-Murillo regime a grotesque dictatorship, yet he wasn’t as vocal about Venezuela. Unlike political parties and civil society organizations, the Church in Venezuela has not been directly targeted. It continues to operate as a discreet but important interlocutor for several actors, and the Vatican would surely prefer that remains the case in the coming years.

Francis dies just after canonizing two Venezuelans, Jose Gregorio Hernández and Mother Carmen Rendiles. A goodbye gift for the believers that has little to do with politics. We don’t know who will succeed him, but we can bet that the next Pope, even if ends up being a former Nuncio to Venezuela, won’t ignite the great expectations Francis gathered around himself in the time of his fumata bianca.

In this sense, the ascension of the new Pope will match the emotional climate in Venezuela: no hope for those who are alone in the world.