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Bishops urge Chávez to stop silencing dissenters
Leaders of the Venezuelan Bishops's Conference (CEV) urged authorities to resist "the temptation of using power to favor some people over others, to restrict freedom of opinion and silence dissenters." Bless the bishops but it's going to take more than this ... In a press release issued on the occasion of the Holy Week, the bishops of Maracaibo, Mérida, Coro and the Auxiliary Bishop of Caracas, Monsignors Ubaldo Santana, Baltazar Porras, Roberto Lückert and Jesús González de Zárate, respectively, urged Venezuelan authorities to respect human rights and take the relevant steps to promote tolerance and coexistence among all Venezuelans. The request made by the bishops comes a few days after Oswaldo Álvarez Paz, a former presidential candidate and former governor of the state of Zulia, and Guillermo Zuloaga, the President of TV news channel Globovisión, were arrested for having expressed their views against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The leaders of the CEV echoed in their statement the remarks previously made by the Metropolitan Bishop of Caracas, Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino, with regard to the threats posed to the Catholic faith, including secularism, superstition, santeria, sex scandals in which priests have been involved and "growing anti-religious spirit spread by the Marxist atheist doctrine." In the document, Santana, Porras, Lückert and González asked Venezuelan people to pray for the Providence to "send the desired rain (on our territory) (...) to put an end to the prolonged drought that is affecting our country." Posted by: Steve White 2010-03-31 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=293658 |