Blog

Political and social divisions in Venezuela have grown to the highest levels of tension. All respect has been lost, even for what is sacred.

After the pronouncements of the leadership of the country’s Catholic Church during Holy Week—asking the government of President Nicolás Maduro to stop “for God’s sake” the crackdown on demonstrators, arbitrary arrests and the use of toxic gases—a group of supporters of the President’s movement attempted to attack the Cardinal, Archbishop of Caracas Jorge Urosa Sabino upon finishing mass at the Santa Teresa Basilica in Caracas. Immediately the leaders of the opposition and ordinary people condemned this outrageous act in social networks.

I believe that, regardless of what a person’s political leanings might be, we cannot lose deference for what is deemed holy. Although the mob had no qualms about entering armed with weapons into a place that is sacred for Catholics, they should at least have taken into account that Cardinal Urosa is an elderly man.

Violently breaking in to temples equates the current regime loyalists to radical extremists in the Middle East such as ISIS, which recently bombed two Christian Coptic churches in Egypt.

The profane cannot take precedence over the sacred, let alone in a country where hunger and insecurity, among other things, make it so that the only thing many of its citizens have to resort to is their faith to cope with the adverse conditions they face.

Michalroanews