Month: July 2019

Merida, Venezuela, Jul 9, 2019 / 10:01 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Baltazar Enrique Porras Cardozo said Monday that conditions in Venezuela continue to deteriorate under the country’s socialist government.

“We are living in an exceptional and unheard-of situation, which is not the result of war, nor of any armed conflict, or any natural catastrophe, and yet which is having similar consequences. The political regime that is running Venezuela has broken the country and has generated an atmosphere of social conflict that is steadily growing worse,” Cardinal Porras, Archbishop of Mérida and Apostolic Administrator of Caracas, told the pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need July 8.

Under the socialist administration of Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela has been marred by violence and social upheaval, with severe shortages of food and medicine, high unemployment, and hyperinflation. More than 4 million Venezuelans have emigrated since 2015.

“People are leaving on account of their economic situation and because of their political ideas, while others are doing so on account of the harassment and repression in the country, whose economic system is now practically ruined,” the cardinal reflected.

“There is absolutely no security under the law. At the same time there is no work and no proper healthcare, there is no possibility for people of bringing home even the minimum to support their family.”

Earlier this year, opposition leader Juan Guaidó, head of the opposition-controlled legislature the National Assembly, declared himself interim president of Venezuela, saying Maduro’s victory in a contested 2018 election was invalid. Guaidó has been recognized by a number of Western governments, but has been largely unable to secure the support of Venezuela’s military.

The National Assembly has been superseded by the pro-government Constituent Assembly, formed in 2017 after contested elections.

Porras said that negotiations held in Oslo between the government and the opposition are “an opportunity to discover if there is any will to restore democracy, which has for now been totally sidelined in this country.”

He reflected that “over the past 20 years, when the government found itself in difficulties, it frequently called for dialogue. But these appeals were only made in order to ‘paper over the cracks’, because the government had no real desire to negotiate sincerely, or to concede anything at all. Given this situation, a large proportion of the population have lost all trust and belief in the idea of dialogue.”

Last week, a UN report said the government has committed a variety of human rights abuses, including a high number of extrajudicial killings.

The cardinal said: “We are deeply concerned at the fact that in the last year the number of people who have been arrested, tortured, murdered or ‘disappeared’ has been growing and that those involved in these actions include not only high-ranking members of the military, but also some members of the pro-government popular classes.”

He charged that Maduro’s government can only control the Venezuelan people “through fear, and by deliberately provoking fuel, food and energy shortages.”

Both “public and private institutions have been destroyed,” Porras said, “and the only institution remaining is the Church.”

“This is thanks to our closeness to the people and to our presence at every level of society,” he stated, adding that the Church “has had the courage to point out the defects of this regime.”

As a result of this, Catholic schools are restricted, and its institutions face “verbal threats and harassment.”

“The parishes are attacked by the government, by the communal councils and the so-called ‘colectivos’, pro-government popular groups. For example, in Caracas, the members of these groups stand at the church doors and listen to what the priest says in his homilies, and if they don’t like it, then the threats begin,” the cardinal stated.

Porras said that the Church in Venezuela is “profoundly grateful to ACN, not only for your material support, but for the spiritual closeness expressed by you, above all through prayer.”

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Managua, Nicaragua, Jul 9, 2019 / 02:19 pm (CNA).- The Archbishop of Managua asked Sunday that the Organization of American States dialogue with the victims of Nicaragua’s sociopolitical crisis.

The continental organization adopted a resolution last month that it will make diplomatic efforst ot resolve the Nicaraguan crisis. It also emphasized the importance of resuming dialogue between the government and opposition, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and called for human rights inspectors to be admitted.

Cardinal Leopoldo José Brenes Solorzano said that “I hope that the people who are going to be sent, can speak not only with the great leaders, but that they come down to the grassroots,” following a July 7 Mass at Managua’s Immaculate Conception Cathedral.

He urged in particular that OAS officials speak to the poor.

“That would be my request, that they talk with everyone, especially with those of us who are always here,” Cardinal Brenes stated.

“We all speak about peace, but everyone has a very different concept. We have to discover what is the peace that the Lord proposes to us: a peace that leads you to concord, breaks with enmities, leads you to the truth. It is based on love,” he said.

He also pointed out that the Church has always considered that demonstrations must be peaceful, civil, without violence or attacks. “What’s important is to express our ideas with strong arguments. Protests are accepted by the Church as long as they are peaceful,” Cardinal Brenes said.

Anti-government protests in Nicaragua began in April 2018. They have resulted in more than 320 deaths, and the country’s bishops mediated on-again, off-again peace talks until they broke down that June.

A new round of dialogue began in February, but the opposition has made the timely release of all protesters a condition of its resumption.

Nicaragua’s crisis began last year after president Daniel Ortega announced social security and pension reforms. The changes were soon abandoned in the face of widespread, vocal opposition, but protests only intensified after more than 40 protestors were killed by security forces.

The pension reforms which triggered the unrest were modest, but protests quickly turned to Ortega’s authoritarian bent.

Ortega has been president of Nicaragua since 2007, and oversaw the abolition of presidential term limits in 2014.

The Church had suggested that elections, which are not scheduled until 2021, be held this year, but Ortega has ruled this out.

Ortega was a leader in the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which had ousted the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and fought US-backed right-wing counterrevolutionaries during the 1980s. Ortega was also leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990.

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Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Jul 9, 2019 / 01:58 pm (CNA).- Families in the Dominican Republic joined together July 4 for a national civic demonstration to protest a new Department of Education norm that establishes policies based on gender ideology.

The demonstration, held simultaneously at 10:00 a.m. in Santo Domingo and Santiago, was called by the “Don’t Mess with My Children” movement to demand the repeal of departmental order 33-2019, approved May 22, 2019.

The new Department of Education norm “establishes as a priority the design and implementation of gender policy” in “the different levels, systems and subsystems in Pre-University Education, in their planes, programs, projects, teaching strategies and administrative activities.”

In a news release addressed to the media, organizers said that thousands attended the demonstrations, including families, schools, parents’ associations and Christian institutions who wanted “to warn about the systematic and organized penetration of gender ideology in the Dominican Republic.”

They charged that “this current has permeated many of the government’s institutions, where they hold talks with titles of tolerance, equality and inclusion that look very attractive, but deep down are loaded with gender ideology.”

“Clear evidence is the Department of Education’s manifesto with the initiative they launched to achieve a perspective on gender in teaching,” they said.

The news release noted that “the term gender was first defined by the Department with the announcement of OD33-2019 as a social construct different than sex, which is the philosophical premise of gender ideology.”

They also called for the repeal of the norm, saying that it has “the clear intention of initiating pre-university students in gender ideology indoctrination.”

Bishop Víctor Masalles of Baní voiced on Twitter his “complete support for the civic demonstration by parents concerned that their children not be indoctrinated in a background of gender ideology.”

“A valid concern that we must support,” he said July 4.

On May 28, the Dominican Bishops’ Conference released a statement opposing the Education Department’s new norm.

“We consider it noxious that the gender policy is included in the design of the curriculum,” they said.

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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