Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, his wife “First Combatant” Cilia Flores, and other senior members of his regime filled the San Francisco Church in Caracas on Thursday for a Holy Week Catholic Mass, a privilege denied to the Venezuelan people thanks to Maduro’s nationwide coronavirus quarantine.
Maduro, who has regularly persecuted Catholic laymen and clergy for demanding an end to state violence against dissidents, appeared in photographs observing a Holy Thursday Mass while wearing a cloth mask. The socialist VIPs also appeared to be standing at least six feet apart in the church’s pews, adhering to “social distancing” guidelines. Among the high-profile members of the Maduro regime attending was Vladimir Padrino López, the minister of defense, believed to be in charge of the repressive apparatus used to kill, torture, and otherwise silence dissidents.
Venezuela’s socialist state television, VTV, reported that the Mass took place “in strict observance of the social, collective, and voluntary quarantine” that Maduro has forced everyone outside of his inner circle to abide by. VTV broadcast the service.
Unlike most Catholic Mass services, this Holy Thursday service featured readings by Maduro himself, among other senior members of the Marxist gang illegally controlling Venezuela (Maduro’s term as president ended in January 2019).
VTV noted that even Pope Francis did not hold a Mass with an audience at the Vatican, but that Maduro and his ilk were allowed to attend such a service.
#EnVideo 📹 | Presidente @NicolasMaduroda da lectura al Salmo Responsorial#SemanaSantaEnUnionYFe pic.twitter.com/EUYtVvlnds
— VTV CANAL 8 (@VTVcanal8) April 9, 2020
Maduro posted several photos from the service prominently featuring himself on Twitter.
“Lovely Holy Thursday Mass!” he wrote on Twitter. “In prayer to our Lord Jesus Christ, the redeemer of the humble, the revolutionary and savior of the world. To him, in my feelings as a practicing Christian, I ask always for the protection of the health and peace of the people of Venezuela. Christ embraces us!”
¡Hermosa Misa de Jueves Santo! En oración a nuestro Señor Jesucristo, el redentor del humilde, el revolucionario y salvador del mundo. A él en mi sentimiento de cristiano practicante, pido siempre por la protección de la salud y la Paz del pueblo de Venezuela. ¡Cristo nos Abraza! pic.twitter.com/dheevDoIAC
— Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) April 9, 2020
The Maduro regime is Marxist by nature, calling into question its ability to also adhere to Christian principles. To resolve this contradiction, Maduro and his cronies regularly refer to Jesus as “revolutionary” and “chavista,” claiming that a living Jesus would have supported murderous late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez. Maduro himself has made comparisons between “the rebel Christ” being executed by the Roman empire and the Maduro narco-terrorist gang’s relationship to the United States.
Conversely, Maduro has referred to anti-socialist opposition supporters as the “antichrist.”
The Holy Thursday Mass infuriated many Venezuelans, the local newspaper El Nacional reported, who noted that Maduro had regularly persecuted members of the Venezuelan Episcopal Conference and prevented Venezuelans from attending similar services, using the Chinese coronavirus as an excuse.
“Marxist-Leninists, admirers of Mao, Fidel, and every atheist out there. Wasn’t Karl Marx, the father of socialism, an atheist?” El Nacional quoted a critic as saying. “Now they claim to be followers of Christ? Son-of-a-bitch narcos, stop mocking the people!”
Maduro has, on multiple occasions, deployed socialist motorcycle gangs known as colectivos to harass dissidents attending Catholic services. On some occasions, the colectivos interrupted a mass and forced believers, at gunpoint, to listen to socialist rants praising Maduro. Colectivos have also ransacked and vandalized churches.
“These are not isolated occurrences but rather, one gets the impression that these are premeditated events meant to intimidate the Catholic Church,” Monsignor Diego Padrón, the head of the episcopal conference at the time, noted in 2017.
Maduro’s Mass this week was led by Father Numa Molina, a priest friendly to the regime. The Venezuelan Episcopal Conference instead urged Venezuelans to observe Holy Week at home.
“The historic circumstances we are living in are an excellent opportunity to give our layperson believers a vote of confidence,” Cardinal Baltazar Porras, the Archbishop of Mérida state, said this week, “to empower their vocation as baptized and disciples of Christ, to help them assume the lovely reality of the family as the domestic Church.”
The Church canceled nationwide ceremonies for Holy Week, including some traditions believed to be as much as 400 years old. The coronavirus did not appear to prevent Maduro from performing readings at his private Mass.
Venezuela – a close cooperative partner of China, the nation where the coronavirus originated and was allowed to spread – claims 171 confirmed cases of coronavirus and nine deaths. Many have expressed doubt regarding Venezuela’s numbers given Maduro’s history of hiding pivotal, and damning, heath statistics like infant and maternal mortality rates. Maduro has responded to the outbreak by first encouraging a “voluntary” quarantine and, upon being widely ignored, making the quarantine mandatory.
Maduro has also promoted misinformation about the virus, such as claims that interferons, an antiviral known since 1962, was recently invented by the communist regime of Cuba and can cure coronavirus. Twitter recently censored a post by Maduro claiming that Sirio Quintero, a socialist falsely claiming to be a doctor, had come up with an herbal cure for coronavirus after discovering that it was artificially engineered out of the HIV.
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