Maduro rips Vatican statement against constitution rewrite

August 08, 2017

Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s socialist president, strongly criticized a recent Vatican statement opposing his government’s plan to rewrite the nation’s constitution.

Referring to the leftist revolution launched by his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, Maduro accused the Vatican of “violence against the Bolivarian Revolution, Venezuela’s legitimate government, and Venezuela as a whole.”

“The hierarchy of the Catholic Church in the country has traditionally been allied to the sectors that held onto powers and privileges, and destroyed the country for almost a century,” Maduro said in an interview with a Buenos Aires radio station.

He added:

One thing is us, Catholics, the people of Christ; another is the trajectory of Pope Francis as a defendant of the peoples with his humility, and another very different one is the structure of the Vatican’s Secretary of State, the bureaucracy.

 

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Further information:

• Venezuela’s Maduro says line of Vatican’s top diplomat is ‘regrettable’ (Crux News)
• Vatican opposes Venezuelan government’s plan for new constitution (CWN, 8/4)