As Maduro crushes the Church and Trump eyes intervention, Pope Leo cautious silence risks catastrophe. The first American pontiff must use his unique moral authority to demand dialogue—and peace.
Newsroom (26/12/2025 Gaudium Press) The detention of Cardinal Baltazar Porras at Caracas airport earlier this month was more than an administrative indignity visited upon an elderly cleric. It was a deliberate humiliation, a stark message from Nicolás Maduro’s crumbling regime to Venezuela’s Catholic Church: cross us, and even the highest shepherds will be brought low. For two hours, the cardinal was interrogated, his Vatican passport confiscated, and a travel ban imposed—all for the crime of attempting to leave the country on official Church business. He was finally deposited, unceremoniously, at baggage claim.
This petty act of repression is merely the latest escalation in a confrontation that has been building for years. Economic collapse, fueled by grotesque mismanagement and compounded by sanctions, has pushed Maduro’s government to the brink. In response, the regime has tightened its grip on every institution capable of dissent—and few have been more consistent, or more courageous, in their criticism than the Venezuelan episcopate. Bishops and priests have denounced poverty, corruption, militarization, and the theft of the people’s will. In return, they have faced harassment, surveillance, and now outright restrictions on movement.
Into this volatile mix steps Pope Leo XIV, the American , Peruvian Missionary who, in May, became the first pontiff from the United States. History will not allow him the luxury of distance. One side of the emerging conflict is his homeland, whose leadership increasingly speaks of Venezuela in terms that evoke regime change. The other is a majority-Catholic nation whose faithful look to Rome for protection and guidance. Leo’s predicament is unique and excruciating: he is simultaneously the spiritual father of Venezuelans suffering under oppression and a son of the very power contemplating military action against them.
Thus far, the pope’s response has been characterized by restraint. He has urged dialogue, avoided direct condemnation of either Maduro or the Trump administration, and relied on carefully calibrated statements from his Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin. This approach has the virtue of predictability—a valuable asset in Vatican diplomacy—and it preserves channels for quiet mediation. Leo’s personal ties to Latin America and his American citizenship give him potential entrees into both Caracas and Washington that few of his predecessors possessed. Behind closed doors, one suspects, his diplomats are working feverishly.
Yet restraint has its limits, and we are fast approaching them. Maduro’s crackdown shows no sign of abating; if anything, the humiliation of Cardinal Porras suggests a regime growing more desperate and reckless. Meanwhile, rhetoric from Washington grows ever more bellicose. A U.S. intervention—whether framed as humanitarian rescue or regime decapitation—would be catastrophic. It would drown Venezuela in blood, destabilize the region, radicalize Latin America’s left for a generation, and place the Church in an impossible position: forced to choose between defending its persecuted flock and opposing a war launched by the pope’s own country.
Pope Leo cannot prevent this outcome through silence or scripted generalities. The moment demands moral clarity, the kind that only the successor of Peter can provide with full global resonance.
He should begin by unequivocally condemning Maduro’s persecution of the Church. The regime’s actions—detaining cardinals, threatening masses, stifling bishops—are not mere political maneuvers; they are assaults on religious freedom and human dignity. Leo need not endorse intervention to make this clear. Indeed, a forceful defense of the Venezuelan Church would strengthen his hand in arguing against military solutions. If the world hears the pope loudly decrying the oppression of Catholics, it becomes far harder to justify “liberation” through invasion.
Simultaneously, Leo must address his American compatriots with the frankness of a prophet speaking to power. The United States has legitimate grievances against Maduro, but war is not the answer. History teaches—often painfully—that military interventions in Latin America rarely produce the intended results and frequently sow resentment that lasts decades. As the first American pope, Leo occupies a singular pulpit from which to remind his countrymen that strength is not measured solely in firepower, and that genuine solidarity with suffering Venezuelans requires patience, diplomacy, and support for non-violent change.
Some will counsel caution, warning that bold statements risk endangering Venezuelan clergy further or straining relations with Washington. These concerns are not trivial. Yet the greater risk lies in passivity. If the Vatican remains largely mute while tensions spiral, it will be complicit—through omission—in whatever horrors follow. Moreover, as scholar Massimo Faggioli has observed, Venezuela’s outcome will reverberate across Latin America. A Church seen as powerless against strongman repression in one country emboldens authoritarians in others—Nicaragua today, perhaps others tomorrow like India or Nicaragua.
Pope Leo’s predecessors have not shied from such moments. John Paul II confronted communism in his native Poland with fearless moral authority. Francis, for all his improvisational style, repeatedly inserted the Holy See into global conflicts, offering mediation and denouncing war unequivocally. Leo’s more institutional approach need not preclude courage. On the contrary, his reliance on professional diplomacy could lend even greater weight to a deliberate, public intervention.
The Vatican has no armies, no sanctions regime, no economic leverage. What it possesses is moral authority and a global platform unmatched by any other non-state actor. In Venezuela, that authority is now urgently required. Pope Leo XIV should use it—not tomorrow, when tanks might roll or bombs might fall, but today, while words might yet suffice.
The Venezuelan people deserve a Church that speaks truth to both tyrant and superpower. The cause of peace demands nothing less. And history, watching the first American pope confront a crisis in America’s backyard, will judge him not by the prudence of his private maneuvers, but by the clarity and courage of his public witness.
In the end, as Fr. Thomas Reese aptly put it, the Vatican believes that as long as parties are talking, they are not shooting. Pope Leo has the power to compel both sides to the table. Whether he exercises it fully may determine whether Venezuela descends into war—or finds, against steep odds, a path to renewal.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Responsible Statecraft
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