Accused by European leaders, Maduro sent a letter to the pope asking for help.

ROME (AFP) – The

dad Francisco,

who was slow to comment on the deepening of the
crisis in

Venezuela

in the last few weeks and when he did, he asked to avoid violence, it seems to be the new card that he wants to play

Nicolás Maduro

in his attempt to unlock the
protests against him and ignores the demand for new presidential elections from the people of his country, but also from the government.
International community

In an interview with Italian channel SkyTG24 on Monday, the Bolivarian leader said he wrote to the pontiff asking for "his best efforts, his will" to advance the dialogue with the opposition.

"I sent a letter to Pope Francisco," Maduro said in this interview filmed in Caracas. In the letter, Maduro declares that "he is at the service of Christ and, in this spirit, I asked him to help us in a process of facilitation, strengthening of the dialogue".

"The governments of Mexico and Uruguay, all governments of the Caribbean, CARICOM and Bolivia, convened a conference for dialogue and peace in Venezuela, February 7" in Montevideo, has -he adds.

"I ask the pope to put all his efforts and his will to help us in this way of dialogue, and we hope to have a positive response," he insisted.

Francisco is in the United Arab Emirates for an international interreligious meeting and must return to Rome tomorrow night.

This is not the first letter exchanged by Francisco and Maduro. In May 2016, the priest had sent a letter to the chavista in which he had warned him that he was closely following the events in his country. In addition, in October of the same year, the Bolivarian visited the head of the Catholic Church in the Vatican. After the meeting, the Holy See issued a statement in which it stated: "The Pope, who cares about the well-being of all Venezuelans, wants to continue to offer his contribution to the institutions of the country and all measures to create a climate of trust between the parties ".

In Italy, the Venezuelan crisis provokes strong tensions. Rome officially recalls that she never acknowledged the Maduro election and demands new presidential elections. For his part, the Deputy Prime Minister and head of the far right, Matteo Salvini, spoke yesterday for a return to democracy in Venezuela "because all communist regimes must be erased from the surface of the earth". But his allies of the Five-Star Movement (M5S, antisystem) are more ambiguous. "The amount of democracy we seek to export to a country is always directly proportional to the amount of oil in that country (…) It takes courage to remain neutral," said Alessandro Di Battista, one tenors of the movement.