BOGOTA, Colombia -- Pope Francis will arrive Wednesday in Colombia for a six-day visit while refugees pour in from neighboring Venezuela and pressure mounts on the first Latin American pontiff to speak out against the Venezuelan government for the worsening turmoil.
Whether it's running soup kitchens in poor barrios of Caracas or attempting to mediate a dialogue between the government and the opposition, the Roman Catholic Church has gradually been drawn into Venezuela's crisis -- frequently leading to clashes with supporters of President Nicolas Maduro and causing friction within the church hierarchy.
Venezuelan bishops are traveling to Colombia to meet with Francis during his visit, though it's not clear what he will say publicly or privately.
Sister Teresinha Monteiro, a Brazilian-born nun who runs the Center for Migrants in Bogota, which has been used to house Venezuelan refugees, said she hopes Francis will "interfere with the hand of God" to end that country's social turmoil, which she expects will only worsen.
Her shelter, built 22 years ago, has never been busier, and the Scalabrinian nuns recently had to throw a dozen extra mattresses onto a conference room floor to accommodate the surge of Venezuelans, who make up all but two of the current 40 residents.
Unable to provide a roof for all the Venezuelans arriving in Bogota, she oversees volunteers who every day patrol Bogota's bus terminal, handing out kits of toiletries and bus fare to those with no place to go.
"You try to instill hope ... but the situation is so critical," said Monteiro, who is taking a group of Venezuelan migrants to Francis' outdoor Mass in Bogota's Simon Bolivar Park on Thursday. "Maduro on a whim wants to demonstrate that he's strong, the owner of the country, and doesn't care about anybody else."
Francis has repeatedly expressed concern about the events in Venezuela and is kept briefed on the country's deteriorating political and economic situation by the Vatican's secretary of state, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who was the papal ambassador in Caracas between 2009 and 2013.
But many in the Venezuelan opposition were skeptical of his offer last year to sponsor dialogue with the government, seeing it as playing into Maduro's strategy of buying time, and felt validated when the talks broke down with little to show for them except briefly cooling a nationwide protest movement.
It didn't burnish the Holy See's claim to neutrality when pictures surfaced in March of Parolin's successor as nuncio, Monsignor Aldo Giordano, smiling alongside top officials while reportedly officiating at the wedding of the daughter of a pro-government supreme court magistrate who would later be sanctioned by the U.S. for violating Venezuela's constitutional order.
Francis, who battled with Latin America's conservative church hierarchy as archbishop of Buenos Aires, has long been seen as being close to some of the region's leftist leaders. Meanwhile, Maduro, who met with Francis at the Vatican when the dialogue effort kicked off, has long accused local bishops of siding with the opposition and ignoring the pope's orders to build bridges.
A key turning point firmly aligning the Vatican and local prelates came during Holy Week in April as protests were returning to Venezuela with a vengeance.
A mob of government supporters stormed a church in downtown Caracas, roughing up worshippers and attacking the capital's archbishop, Cardinal Jorge Urosa, as he was delivering a sermon calling for the government to cease "the exaggerated repression" against anti-government protesters.
Alarmed by the rising levels of violence at protests that claimed 120 lives, local bishops took the unusual step of traveling to Rome to personally brief Francis on how bad the situation had become. The June visit was all the more significant because the bishops themselves initiated it instead of being invited by the Vatican, as is usually the case.
"Today in Venezuela, there's no ideological conflict between left and right," the bishops said in their greeting to Francis. "There's a battle between a government that has become a dictatorship serving its own interests and an entire people who want freedom and are searching desperately, at the risk of their own lives, for bread, medicine, security, work, elections, freedom and autonomous political power."
In an Aug. 4 statement, the Vatican joined the U.S. and other foreign governments in condemning Maduro's plans to rewrite the constitution as an illegitimate power grab, saying it was "fomenting a climate of tension and confrontation." It demanded that all sides -- "and in particular the government" -- respect basic human rights and the Constitution, a jab at Maduro.
But many Venezuelans would like Francis to go even further.
Angel Bastidas is among those aided by the Scalabrinian missionaries in Bogota. The 25-year-old college graduate recalled how a third of the $750 in savings with which he hoped to rebuild his life abroad was stolen by Venezuelan national guardsmen while he and his friends were being frisked at a checkpoint near the border.
He said he blames Francis for giving the government political oxygen and hopes he'll take advantage of his trip to Colombia to send a clear message that he's with the Venezuelan people against Maduro.
A Section on 09/02/2017