Caracas, Venezuela, Jun 11, 2009 / 12:50 pm
Responding to the address by Archbishop Ubaldo Santana to Pope Benedict XVI during the Venezuelan bishops’’ recent ad limina visit, Venezuela’s Interior Minister, Tareck El Aissami, accused the bishops of becoming a “political party” that incites hatred.
During the bishops’ visit to Rome, Archbishop Santana delivered an evaluation of the current situation in Venezuela and told the Holy Father that the political agenda of Hugo Chavez has caused “a growing political polarization has increased violence, insecurity and hatred, seriously jeopardizing peaceful democratic coexistence.”
“If anyone has spread hatred in Venezuela,” El Assami stated, “it has been the bishops’ conference.’
“The only thing to say in response to the bishops’ sad depiction is, may God forgive them, they don’t know what they are saying,” he accused.