It should have been the best week South America had in recent memory. On March 5, 2013, the death of Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan commandante of the Castro mold, was announced. A week later, the conclave began that would elect Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina on March 13 — the first-ever supreme pontiff from South America.  

It turned out that Chavismo did not die with Chávez, and the successor regime of Nicolás Maduro has delivered widespread repression while pauperizing what should be a rich country. And for 11 years, the Latin American pope has been vexed by how to deal with Maduro’s Venezuela.  

It has been an 11-year nightmare for the Venezuelan people — some 8 million of whom have fled the country — and an ongoing frustration for Vatican diplomacy, which has not managed to provide comfort to suffering Venezuelans nor rally effective opposition to the regime. 

All of this made awkward what is usually a boring bit of diplomatic routine. On Aug. 14, Archbishop Alberto Ortega Martín, the new apostolic nuncio to Venezuela, presented his credentials to Maduro. It’s obligatory protocol. Nevertheless, scheduled just weeks after Maduro was “reelected” in what is widely regarded as a fraudulent election, it made it appear as if the Vatican sympathized with Maduro rather than the opposition. Which is exactly what Maduro wanted and the Vatican was unable to avoid. 

It was never expected that Maduro’s repressive regime would permit a free election, so the opposition organized ahead of time to publicize the true results. The official, Maduro-controlled, National Electoral Council reported that Maduro got 54% of the vote. It did not publish the results from individual polling stations, as is customary. The opposition uploaded 81% of those polling station results, showing that Edmundo González, the opposition leader, won in a landslide, with 67% of the vote.  

Protests against Maduro’s fraud have been violently put down by the regime, with 24 dead and nearly 2,500 arrests.  

The Venezuelan bishops have called for the complete results to be released, siding with the opposition calls for the same.  

Venezuela’s two cardinals issued a blistering denunciation of the Maduro regime. Cardinal Baltazar Porras, emeritus of Caracas, and Cardinal Diego Padrón, emeritus of Cumaná, accused the government of a “‘coup d’etat’ constructed ad hoc.” 

“What we cannot do is become another church of silence, letting time pass in vain,” Cardinals Porras and Padrón said in their Aug. 1 statement. “We are not and cannot be neutral. It is necessary to carefully check the facts, to prophetically denounce, even at risk, injustices, and to proclaim our principles and values, accompanying the people in solidarity and pastorally, a task that is not easy but necessary.” 

A few days after that statement, Pope Francis made “a heartfelt appeal to all parties to seek the truth, to exercise restraint, to avoid any kind of violence, to settle disputes through dialogue.” 

That kind of “all parties” Vatican response, which has marked the Holy Father’s Venezuela policy for more than a decade, causes deep upset in Venezuela. It is not the opposition that is causing violence, and dialogue with a repressive regime looks to many like appeasement.  

The Vatican has repeatedly chosen not to reinforce, or even echo, the strong statements of the Venezuelan bishops. Indeed, at many times Maduro himself has taunted the Venezuelan bishops that they should be more like Pope Francis and ease off their criticism. 

Given that the Holy Father is not shy to speak frankly about those who oppose his policies, for example, on immigration or climate change, his reluctance to challenge Maduro’s claims has been interpreted in the authoritarian’s favor.  

While the Vatican has disappointed the Venezuelan opposition and upset local Catholics with a “both sides” approach, Maduro has not reciprocated the gentler treatment.  

The appointment of a new nuncio in Caracas follows a three-year standoff after the previous nuncio departed. Maduro resisted for years even welcoming a diplomat, let alone accommodating the goals of Vatican diplomacy. A 1964 concordat between the Holy See and Venezuela permits the government to veto episcopal nominations. Unlike Chávez before him, Maduro has used that power to block the nomination of prominent archbishops for years, including Cardinal Porras. 

The official reception of the nuncio while Venezuelan democracy advocates lie dead was clearly intended to embarrass the Vatican and to earn it criticism from local democracy advocates. Maduro has been skilled, during the repeated crises of his regime, in dividing the local Catholic leadership — very popular in Venezuela — against Pope Francis.  

Major protests erupted in 2014, 2017 and 2019 and hundreds of protesters were killed by the regime. In 2019, when many countries recognized another candidate as the legitimate president in the face of electoral fraud, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, explained the Holy Father’s less robust response as “positive neutrality.”  

The Vatican’s reputation has never fully recovered from that. The Venezuela opposition does not regard “neutrality” between Maduro and those Maduro jails as “positive.” The reception of the new nuncio, at a time and circumstance favorable to Maduro’s propaganda efforts, will not change the negative assessment of Vatican diplomacy.  

Two things have perplexed observers of the Holy Father’s Venezuela policy. 

First, the welcoming of refugees has been one of the most important issues of the pontificate. The best way to avoid the suffering of refugees is for them not to become refugees in the first place. Maduro’s repression and impoverishment of Venezuela has led to 8 million Venezuelans fleeing the country, roughly 25% of the population. No regime has created more refugees than Maduro’s Venezuela. And yet the Vatican has not criticized him as the premier producer of refugee suffering in the world.  

Second, the Vatican is run by Venezuela experts. Cardinal Parolin was the nuncio in Venezuela from 2009 to 2013, before being appointed to his current post. His deputy, the sostituto, is a Venezuelan, Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra. The current father general of the Jesuits, Father Arturo Sosa, is also from Venezuela.  

With all that expertise, how is it that such leadership seems unable to find a better path on Venezuela? For the new nuncio, one of his principal tasks will be defending the Vatican’s ineffective diplomacy to local Catholics — and perhaps coming up with a better approach.