Caracas, Venezuela, Jul 31, 2007 / 09:11 am
The president of the Bishops’ Conference of Venezuela, Archbishop Ubaldo Santana of Maracaibo, said this week the bishops have already asked for a meeting with President Hugo Chavez but are still awaiting a positive response.
Archbishop Santana stated that the bishops are convinced that there is an “urgent need for dialogue,” not only between the Church and the State, but also between different sectors of Venezuelan society.
Speaking with reporters, the archbishop said, “When we ask to be heard and to discuss ways of finding paths of understanding and reconciliation, we want to do so not only to be heard, but also in order to create a culture of dialogue in our Venezuelan society, in order to at least intensify it because I think this attitude of sitting down with one another is very much engrained in Venezuelans.”
Archbishop Santana said the main stumbling block in Church-State relations is that some segments of the government misunderstand the role of the bishops and they do not realize that the pastors “speak in the name of 90% of Catholics.”