Venezuela church-state clash grows

Chávez vs. the Catholic Church

Mari Hernandez, a lifelong Catholic who supports both Chávez and his social missions, says her church in Barlovento, on the coast of Venezuela, has always supported the poor. "Our job is to contribute," says Ms. Hernandez, who on a recent Sunday carried a box of sugar, flour, and bread with her to mass for a food drive.

But politics has dominated Chávez's relationship with the church, with name-calling and finger-pointing that seems to be at an ultimate low.

Recently the Catholic Church condemned a so-called "blacklist" to disqualify some 275 politicians, many of them opposition candidates, from local elections in November, calling it in a statement "a measure that tarnishes the democratic environment."

Many blame the rocky relationship on the Catholic Church, not on Chávez. Leonardo Marin Saavedra, bishop of the Anglican Latin American Church based in Canada, who has guided the Reformist Catholic Church of Venezuela and was in Venezuela for the consecration, says it is the Catholic Church that is playing politics in the country. "The Catholic Church wants all of Venezuela to hate Chávez, they are the ones politicizing," he says.

This is, of course, not the first time that liberal leaders have fought with the church.

During the height of liberation theology in the 1970s and 80s, priests in Nicaragua came under fire for sharing sympathies with the Sandinistas. The same controversy emerged in El Salvador, during that country's civil war.

Mr. Vasquez says he believes liberation theology helped lay the foundation for the leftist tilt in Latin America, with many current leaders, such as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, influenced by its teachings.

The starkest example is Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez, a former Roman Catholic bishop known as the "bishop of the poor," who was recently elected president of Paraguay. "The general spirit of liberation theology has become part of the civil discourse in Latin America," says Vasquez.

Many expect the confrontation between church and state to pick up steam. Nikolas Kozloff, author of the "Revolution! South America and The Rise of The New Left," calls it inevitable. Unlike other Latin American countries, the Catholic Church in Venezuela never fully embraced the tenets of liberation theology. Yet today, Catholics and Protestants across the country have signed onto Chávez's message. "If you go to these [social] missions, you see a lot of people supporting Chávez, placing a big emphasis on social work," Mr. Kozloff says. "There is an overlap."

Many say this is long overdue. "The Catholic Church only attends to the needs of the rich. It is our spiritual mission to work with the poor people of Latin America," says Mr. Marin Saavedra.

"I am not a socialist," he adds. "But I do personally admire that [Chávez] has helped the poor."

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