Negotiations between government and opposition groups leading to free and fair elections are needed to put an end to violence in Venezuela and bring relief to a suffering people, a Vatican official has said.
In a letter to six former Latin American heads of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, said the Holy See continued to follow Pope Francis’s directives and was “trying to help find a solution to the current serious difficulties”.
“The Holy See continues to consider that a serious and sincere negotiation between the parties, based on very clear conditions, beginning with the celebration of constitutionally scheduled elections, can solve the serious situation in Venezuela and the suffering to which the population is subjected,” the cardinal said.
The Vatican did not release the cardinal’s letter, but it was posted on the blog Il Sismografo. The letter does not signal a change in the Vatican’s approach.
Cardinal Parolin said last October that the government had to call fresh elections.
Earlier this month Pope Francis met the leadership of the Venezuelan bishops’ conference, which requested the meeting as the country’s political and economic crisis turned increasingly violent. Since April, anti-government protests have led to the deaths of about 70 people.
Cardinal Parolin’s statement came a day after the Pope received a letter from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Although his government’s violent tactics against protesters have been denounced by the Church in Venezuela, Mr Maduro claims he has the support of Pope Francis.
In his letter, Mr Maduro defended the government’s handling of the protests, saying that the violence was caused by an “extreme right-wing” opposition that was “increasingly smaller and, therefore, more and more insane”. But Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino of Caracas told Vatican Radio that “the repression” exercised by Maduro’s government “has been increasingly cruel”.
In addition to official security forces, there are pro-government, armed civilian groups, “which is absolutely criminal”, he said.
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Catholic bishops in Cameroon have said that a bishop whose body was pulled from a river was murdered.There had been speculation that Bishop Jean-Marie Benoit Balla had committed suicide; but the bishops said they could “affirm” that he was “brutally murdered”. The bishops said his death was “one more murder, and one too many”.
