President Nicolas Maduro has accepted a proposal by the opposition to ask the Vatican to facilitate dialogue with Venezuela's socialist government.
The Union of South American Nations' Secretary General Ernesto Samper met late on Thursday with Maduro and afterward announced that he would ask Pope Francis to send a representative to Venezuela. Samper was in Caracas along with former Spanish President Jose Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero in an effort to revive a two-month-old attempt to bring the sides together to resolve the country's economic and political crisis.
