Merida, Venezuela, Jul 9, 2019 / 21:01 pm
Cardinal Baltazar Enrique Porras Cardozo said Monday that conditions in Venezuela continue to deteriorate under the country's socialist government.
"We are living in an exceptional and unheard-of situation, which is not the result of war, nor of any armed conflict, or any natural catastrophe, and yet which is having similar consequences. The political regime that is running Venezuela has broken the country and has generated an atmosphere of social conflict that is steadily growing worse," Cardinal Porras, Archbishop of Mérida and Apostolic Administrator of Caracas, told the pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need July 8.
Under the socialist administration of Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela has been marred by violence and social upheaval, with severe shortages of food and medicine, high unemployment, and hyperinflation. More than 4 million Venezuelans have emigrated since 2015.
"People are leaving on account of their economic situation and because of their political ideas, while others are doing so on account of the harassment and repression in the country, whose economic system is now practically ruined," the cardinal reflected.