Sawt Falasteen - Beleaguered Venezuela celebrates double canonization

Pope Leo XIV proclaimed seven new saints earlier in the day in the Vatican, including Jose Gregorio Hernandez Cisneros, a layman who died in 1919, whom the late Pope Francis called a "doctor close to the weakest."

Also from Venezuela was Maria Carmen Rendiles Martinez, a nun born without a left arm who overcame her disability to found the Congregation of the Servants of Jesus before her death in 1977. She is now the South American country's first female saint.

Some Venezuelans called this a "double blessing" for a country which has endured years of economic crisis marked by shortages of food and other basics, plus political repression under socialist President Nicolas Maduro.

Outside the Church of Our Lady of Candelaria in Caracas, thousands of people watched the canonization ceremony in Rome -- about dawn in Venezuela -- on a large screen.

They wrapped themselves in the Venezuelan flag, held balloons and wore T-shirts with the faces of the two new saints.

People screamed out, cried or laughed as a priest shouted, "Jose Gregorio and Sister Carmen Rendiles are now saints."

Yesenia Angulo, 63, called the canonization a blessing and a miracle.

"One's political persuasion does not matter. What we are going through does not matter," she told AFP.

"It is two saints in one day for a country that has come through a very difficult situation," said Angulo.

Both were approved by Pope Francis before he died in April and was succeeded by Pope Leo.

Hernandez, the doctor, was famous for treating people for free and sometimes giving them money to buy medicine. He died in 1919 at age 54 when he was hit by a car while on his way to see a patient.

Rendiles, the nun who overcame a disability, is less well known to Catholics in Venezuela.

Amid all the anticipation for the canonization, politics entered the fray.

Maduro, handpicked to succeed the socialist icon Hugo Chavez in 2013, is accused of running a repressive autocratic regime and of stealing the last election in 2024 to stay in power six more years.

In recent days, the Venezuelan Bishops Conference called on the Maduro government to mark the canonization by releasing political prisoners.

Cardinal Baltazar Porras of Venezuela, who was at the ceremony, said his country is facing "a morally unacceptable situation" and also called for the release of political prisoners.

With US warships deployed off the coast of Venezuela in a tense standoff, the government started referring to Hernandez as the "militia doctor."

It depicted him as eager to defend the country during a 1902 naval blockade by European powers and compared this to its training these days of civilian militia to fend off what it calls threats from the United States under President Donald Trump.

Murals, sculptures and other works depicting Hernandez have been inaugurated recently, including a large painting of his face on a wall in Petare, the biggest slum in Caracas.

Q.Jaber--SF-PST