(OSV News) — As the presidential campaign came to an end July 25 in Venezuela, many Catholics — including those in exile — are hopeful that change will finally be possible in the South American nation after 25 years of Chavismo and 11 years under the rule of Nicolás Maduro.
Chavismo or Chavism is a left-wing populist political ideology based on ideas and government style associated with the Venezuelan president between 1999 and 2013 — Hugo Chávez. It caused millions of Venezuelans to flee the country that turned from economic giant to ruin. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that more than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left since 2014, the largest exodus in Latin America’s recent history.
Although most analysts affirm that religion doesn’t play a central role in the current electoral process, church leaders believe that in the July 28 elections most Catholics will vote for the opposition — headed by former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia — after years of persecution by the regime. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was banned from the ballot and supports González.
According to sociologist and theologian Enrique Ali González, professor at the Central University of Venezuela, lay Catholics have been solidly organized over the past few weeks in prayer groups and Eucharistic adoration movements, and played an important role in the final phase of the campaign.
“Such groups have been keeping continuous communication through social media about the elections and are partially related to the so-called ‘comanditos’ (little commandos), the basic election committees of the opposition,” Ali González told OSV News.
Prayer groups have been key in persuading Catholics to vote for González. They also manifested public opposition to the regime on more than one occasion. That was the case when Maduro declared that an electoral defeat of Chavismo could lead to a bloodbath in the country.
“Many of such movements said on the Internet that only the blood of Christ (materialized in the Eucharist) is acceptable in Venezuela,” Ali González added.
Between 82% and 86% of Venezuelans are Catholic, while 10%-12% are Protestant. Since the beginning of the regime, Chávez tried to reduce the church’s influence on society, Ali González argued.
“He — and Maduro, after his (Chavez’s) death — incentivized Afro-Venezuelan creeds, esoteric trends from Europe, freemasonry, and even evangelical Christians. But they failed to lessen the strength of Venezuelan Catholicism,” he said.
Over the past couple of years, Maduro managed to draw support from some of the neo-Pentecostal leaders in Venezuela with state incentive programs for churches. But that group is not dominant among Protestants and will not make a real difference in electoral terms, Ali González said.
An enduring economic crisis that has led millions of Venezuelans to migrate and created a legacy of state repression are the central elements guiding most Catholics to support the opposition.
While a few months ago many Catholic leaders thought that the elections were only theater and that nothing would really change — some of them even argued that people should not go vote in order to avoid taking part in the regime’s farce — now most of them are saying the opposite.
“Every Catholic must go vote early in the day and must convince others to do the same. That’s the only way of dismantling possible frauds from the regime,” Father José Palmar, who has been exiled in Florida for years, told OSV News.
Father Palmar, who at the beginning was close to Chavismo but then realized the regime’s contradictions and broke up with it, said that the government has always had a small majority of support in the previous elections, and thus was able to fraudulently portray its votes as landslide victories.
Now, the situation is very different. Surveys have been showing that opposition candidate González will beat Maduro with a large difference. He may get 55%-60% support, while the current leader will receive a maximum of 25% of the votes.
“I estimate that the difference will be even higher than that, with González Urrutia receiving 70% of the votes and Maduro only 15%,” Father Palmar said.
With a large international pressure for clean and fair elections and an “honest opposition — one that is not willing to sell itself for positions in the government, like other politicians did in the past,” the regime is facing a set of circumstances that have never been at play before, Father Palmar told OSV News.
“That’s why we have plenty of reasons to be optimistic right now,” he said.
Both the Venezuelan bishops’ conference and the conference of religious issued statements in the days leading to elections, inviting Catholics to vote, and making it clear that to rebuild the country people should leave behind political apathy.
“The church has always been diplomatic, and a prophetic word — calling that government a dictatorship, for instance — is not easy for it. But now the episcopate had an assertive message and called the people to vote,” Father Palmar said.
Giovanni Luisio Mass, a lay brother who heads the canonical association Order of the Poor Knights of Christ in Venezuela — which is present in five cities, including Caracas — told OSV News that there’s an atmosphere of joy and hope among Catholics in the country at this moment, with more and more people aware that abstention is not an option now.
“The church prayer campaigns have been very successful. We feel the difference, as we see Catholics on the streets with their rosaries and the image of the Virgin,” he stressed.
Most Venezuelans know the opposition will win, Mass added. “The problem is the potential promotion of frauds by the regime,” he said.
“If María Corina Machado, the main opposition leader who was impeded to be a candidate by the (state) justice (system) in January, was running now, the opposition would probably attain 80% of support in ‘normal conditions,'” Ali González added.
“But we never know how the government will act. Even sabotage can happen,” he said.
Eduardo Campos Lima writes for OSV News from São Paulo.
