The Archdiocese of Caracas announced the suspension of a massive thanksgiving Mass for the canonizations of Saint José Gregorio Hernández and Saint Carmen Rendiles, the first Venezuelan saints.
An official statement from the archdiocese said the cancellation was due to lack of space and security reasons. But sources close to the situation told The Pillar that the Mass was cancelled because the Venezuelan regime had attempted to turn the Mass into a rally for President Nicolás Maduro, by filling the stadium with government supporters.
A Mass of Thanksgiving in Venezuela had been planned for October 25 in the Monumental Simón Bolívar Stadium, the largest baseball stadium in the country.
The “Feast of Holiness” — as the Mass and subsequent celebrations had been named — were initially expected to gather almost 50,000 Catholics from all over Venezuela, along with all bishops of the country and some from nearby countries as well.
But in an Oct. 22 statement, the Archdiocese of Caracas said more than 80,000 people had registered to take part in the Mass, and that officials expected many others to attend without registering, which would make the turnout higher than the stadium could accommodate.
“After a rigorous technical and pastoral analysis of the potential locations, we’ve concluded that it is not viable to conduct the celebration in the Estadio Monumental under the necessary security and capacity requirements,” the archdiocese said.
“Therefore, with the desire to take care and promote the participation of everyone, we took a profoundly pastoral decision: The Feast of Holiness will be celebrated in every parish and community of Caracas,” the statement said.
However, various sources close to the Archdiocese of Caracas told The Pillar that, while the statement is accurate, it does not tell the whole story.
“The government was planning to send thousands of regime supporters from all over the country in buses to the Mass to prevent actual Catholics from going to the Mass and fill it with their people, turning it into a pro-Maduro rally. Once the bishops found out, they decided to cancel the Mass,” a source told The Pillar. Several other sources close to the Archdiocese of Caracas corroborated that account.
Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro was expected to participate in the Mass, along with the highest government officials in the country.
The Venezuelan government had collaborated in funding and organizing the event, drawing criticism from many local Catholics due to the abysmal human rights situation in the country.
“The government overplayed its hand. They went to Rome with hundreds of people, tried to trick the pope into a photo op, tried to make people think that they had an audience with the pope and support in the Vatican, which only led the Vatican and the bishops to become even more distant,” a source close to the situation told The Pillar.
Tensions between the Church and government were already high after Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro accused Cardinal Baltazar Porras, Archbishop Emeritus of Caracas, in an Oct. 21 speech of “conspiring” to derail Hernández’s canonization. Maduro claimed that Pope Francis didn’t know who Hernández was until he introduced the saint’s story to him.
Concerns had been raised about the possible politicization of the canonizations by the Venezuelan regime.
Many in Venezuela were worried that the regime would use the unveiling of a mosaic of Our Lady of Coromoto, patroness of Venezuela, in the Vatican gardens, as an opportunity to claim support in the Vatican and among the Venezuelan bishops.
However, only one Venezuelan bishop was present at the unveiling, and the most senior Vatican official there was Archbishop Emilio Nappa, secretary general of the Vatican governorate.
The canonization and surrounding events seem to have marked a turning point for both the Vatican and the local bishops, from an apparent strategic silence to a vocal denunciation of abuses in the country.
A few days before the canonization, the Venezuelan bishops published a pastoral letter in which they called for the release of the more than 800 political prisoners in the country.
And in an Oct. 17 event in Rome commemorating the canonizations, Cardinal Porras said that the situation in Venezuela was “morally unacceptable [including] the growth of poverty, militarization as a form of government to incite violence, corruption, and lack of autonomy of public powers, and the disrespect of the people’s will.”
In an Oct. 20 thanksgiving Mass for the canonization of the first two Venezuelan saints, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin offered one of the most scathing criticisms of the Venezuelan regime by a Vatican official in recent times, with the government’s official delegation sitting in the front row.
Parolin called upon the government to “listen to the words of the Lord, who calls you to open unjust prisons, to break the chains of oppression, to set the oppressed free, to break all chains.”