Center for women with crisis pregancies to open in Argentina

Caracas, Venezuela, Apr 5, 2017 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Shortly after Venezuela’s supreme court revised its decision effectively stripping the legislature of its powers this weekend, one of the country’s cardinals responded by calling the reversal a mere “cosmetic retouching.”

Venezuela’s Supreme Court, packed with supporters of president Nicolas Maduro, announced March 29 that it would assume the functions of the National Assembly, where the opposition holds a majority.

The move was denounced domestically and internationally as a coup and a blow to democracy. In the face of this criticism Maduro asked the court to revise its rulings, which it did April 1.

“The corrections to the rulings are cosmetic retouchings that do not resolve the situation in the least, because the measures that shut down the National Assembly as an autonomous power continue, and confound the population,” Cardinal Baltazar Porras Cardozo of Merida responded April 2.

Cardinal Porras said that there remains the request “made last year that the legislature be restored to its full authority. This is a universal demand of many countries.”

The Archbishop of Merida said the lack of popular sovereignty and refusing participation to any group dissenting from the central government is reprehensible.

“If this continues, it can be an invitation to chaos and disorder and provoke an unnecessary bloodbath. If there are reasons to disown the legislature, it’s the people who have to decide that. At this time the real needs of the people are the lack of food and medicine,” he noted.

Similarly, Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino of Caracas pointed out that “the blockade of the National Assembly persists.”

“I’m still worried that the country has been in a state of emergency regarding economic matters for about a year. This is not normal,” he said April 2.

He likewise noted that the government’s controversial measures “such as the cancellation of the (presidential) recall referendum, that the problem of the representatives from Amazonas state has not been resolved, that the election of governors has been postponed. All this sets up a dictatorship.”

One of the most contentious issues the country faces is the economy, where the world’s highest inflation rates, price controls, and failed economic policies have resulted in severe shortages of basic necessities like medicines, milk, flour, toilet paper, and other essentials.
Venezuela’s socialist government, in power since 1999, is widely blamed for the crisis.
The shortages have their roots in policies enacted by Hugo Chavez in 2003 that control the price of nearly 160 products such as flour, milk, oil and soap. While these products are affordable at the government listed price, they are in short supply and fly off the shelves, ending up on the black market at much higher rates.

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Cucuta, Colombia, Apr 2, 2018 / 01:56 pm (ACI Prensa).- With a flour shortage leading to a lack of hosts in Venezuela, the neighboring diocese of Cúcuta, Colombia donated 250,000 hosts for border dioceses to celebrate liturgies during Triduum.

Bishop Victor Manuel Ochoa of Cúcuta donated the hosts to dioceses along the Colombian-Venezuelan border in their area, saying that he hoped to convey “the charity of Christ.”

The delivery was made early March 30 on the Simon Bolivar International Bridge, which connects the two countries.

Venezuela is facing severe food and medicine shortages amid the economic crisis under President Nicolas Maduro. Thousands have fled the country as necessities become increasingly scarce.

This is not the first time that the Diocese of Cúcuta has donated components for the Eucharist to the nearby Venezuelan Church.

The Diocese of Cúcuta, which provides thousands of meals daily to refugees fleeing from Venezuela into Colombia, noted in a statement that “it is also important to take care of the needs that afflict the Faith as a consequence of this time of crisis in the border region.”

The grave crisis facing Venezuela has also affected the life of the local Church.

As early as August 2015, it had been reported that the economic crisis had caused the production of hosts in three Venezuelan states to drop by 60 percent.

In a March 28 RCN Radio broadcast, Sister Pilar Rivas of the Servants of Jesus Mother House, which makes hosts for parishes in Caracas and Venezuela’s interior, said that in the last two years, they have had to short-fill orders due to the lack of raw material.

“With orders placed in advance, if they ask for 10,000 hosts we give them 2,000 because we can’t meet a very big demand for orders…Sometimes we have to stop making hosts due to the shortage of flour, we have gone for entire weeks without being able to make hosts,” she said.

In some areas, priests have had to divide hosts into numerous pieces in order to provide for the faithful.

Sister Pilar voiced hope that “with the mercy of God and the help of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” circumstances in the country will improve.

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Santiago, Chile, Sep 17, 2018 / 05:01 pm (ACI Prensa).- Pope Francis has decreed, without recourse to appeal, the dismissal from the clerical state of Cristián Precht Bañados, who was found guilty of abuse of minors in 2012.

The Santiago… […]