Venezuela in row with Catholic Church, cardinal loses passport | OneFootball

The regime of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela has caused the first incident with the Catholic Church since the inauguration of León XIV, after Cardinal Baltazar Porras Cardozo was stripped of his passport at the Caracas International Airport, just hours before he was to board a flight to Spain. For now, there has been no official statement from the Vatican.

“They told me that the passport had issues and that they couldn’t do anything,” the prelate said in a message he sent to his colleagues to inform them of what had happened. “The most common thing in this last quarter of a century is to suffer almost always, with few exceptions,” he remarked.

According to the account he gave about the episode he had to endure last Thursday, a Migration officer took his passport and left the office to consult because the system was not working. According to his statement, they explained to him once that “he was not on the list” and on two other occasions that he appeared as deceased.

“This morning, the officer asked if I had checked my passport because it was not up to date and that he needed to consult. He took it along with the boarding pass, I imagine to show it to his superior. After a while, that person told me the passport had problems and that they couldn’t do anything,” he said.

He also explained that after not being able to board his flight, he had to leave the airport without his passport, since they refused to return it. “It hurts because it goes against the rights we have as citizens,” he expressed.

“We are in the Christmas season. Strength lies in the weakness of the manger, in the fragility of truth that is built in peace, without violence and without abuse. Hope lies in continuous work for the good of all, especially the excluded,” he affirmed.

After the incident, the opposition in Venezuela condemned what happened and described the incident as an “aggression” by the regime. Meanwhile, a statement from the Pope is awaited, who has not yet commented. “We must avoid responses that are not well regarded,” a Church source told Noticias Argentinas.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here.