Venezuelan cardinal defends his right to criticize government

Accepting an invitation to address the coordinating committee of Venezuela's national assembly, the cardinal of Caracas defended his right as a citizen to voice his concern about political issues without being slandered by the nation's president.

Vatican Radio reported that Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino addressed the 15-member committee July 27 after being accused of attacking Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the nation's legislature.

Opening celebrations of Venezuela's bicentennial July 5, Chavez called the cardinal a pig and said "he tries to scare people about communism."

Cardinal Urosa told the committee that in exercising both his rights as a citizen and his duties as archbishop of Caracas, he was giving voice to Gospel values and to "the concerns and interests of the Venezuelan people for peace, encounter, inclusion and for respect for the civil, social and political human rights enshrined in the constitution."

Venezuelan Catholic leaders have been among the harshest critics of the policies of Chavez, who was first elected in 1998 and has promised to transform the oil-rich nation into a socialist state. Church officials have accused the Chavez government of violating civil rights, permitting an explosion of crime and weakening democracy. Chavez, in turn, has accused the church leadership of elitism.

Cardinal Urosa told the parliamentary committee that none of his preaching or public statements has ever been motivated by political partisanship, but by concern for democracy, human rights and political pluralism.

"I expressed the opinion that President Chavez wants to lead the country on the path toward Marxist socialism," he told the committee, adding that "this is not news because the president on various occasions has affirmed being a Marxist."

"The Marxist socialist stand is totalitarian because it occupies every sphere, as happened in the countries subjected to a socialist or communist regime such as in Central Europe and the Soviet Union in the past and in Cuba still today," he said.

The cardinal said he has never attacked the legislature or other branches of government, although he has expressed concern about certain laws that appear to be reducing political pluralism and freedom of expression or which tend to reduce the power of local and regional governments, concentrating power in the hands of the national government.

Cardinal Urosa said he and the country's other bishops are ready and willing to engage in dialogue with the government and the legislators for the good of the Venezuelan people and the safeguarding of democracy and human rights in the country.

SIC: USCM