A letter from Nicolás Maduro to Pope Francisco and the limits of a Vatican intervention – 04/02/2019

Nicolás Maduro revealed on Monday that he had sent a letter to the pope asking for an intervention. "I ask him to do his best, his willingness to help us on the path of dialogue," he said. Until last night, there was silence in the Vatican.

They do not usually attribute to Maduro a great political sagacity, but we must recognize the use that he makes of every attempt at dialogue with the opposition to save time, run away and stay in power. Francisco suffered two years ago when he tried to listen by sending a delegate to Archbishop Claudio Celli, who had come and gone several times from Caracas, still empty-handed. It all ended with a hard letter from the Vatican State Secretary, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, in Maduro, in which he blamed him for the failure of the talks.

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Now, Maduro, stuck by much of the international community and stifled financially by the headquarters of the oil company PDVSA that Donald Trump has ordered in the United States, has decided to appeal again to the pontiff. Francisco himself had expressed, during his flight back to Rome, after his visit to Panama, his willingness to intervene again in fear of a much larger bloodshed. However, it would be fatal for Francisco – who is accused of weakness towards the regime – to be used for the second time.

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In principle, we must specify that an intervention of the pope requires a request from both parties. And so far, this has been done by Maduro only by a letter of several days and that the Holy See did not reveal, perhaps precisely, because it does not grant any relevance to the extent that the institutional opposition led by Juan Guaidó does not demand it. And will he do it? It will be necessary to see why the questions to the pope weigh, beyond what the Venezuelan church is very opposite to Maduro and that its principal referents say to feel to be accompanied by the pontiff.

The repeated argument of the Vatican is that the pope is an actor of last resort that must be preserved in case of intervention. And because, as Francisco has hinted from Panama, a blessing for the opposition could lead to situations of violence of greater magnitude. However, this position – which follows a traditional line of the Holy See – does not convince the sectors most opposed to Maduro. With all the letters: is the pope seen with sufficient impartiality?

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What would be the result of a good offices management or facilitation of a dialogue? Elections with international supervision, amnesty for the military and asylum for Maduro and his administration, it would be good to venture. Already in the past, with the intervention of the Vatican, it had been explored that Cuba would house the popes of the regime. Would he accept Maduro this time? Or are the objectives of the negotiation too ambitious? Would they have an extremely high risk of failure for Francisco? The pope seems willing to badume it.