Sep 4, 2007 / 08:49 am
The Venezuelan government is increasingly interfering with Catholic education, leading to divisions across the country and possibly paving the road for a civil war.
A Catholic priest and headmaster of a Catholic school in Venezuela has expressed his fear that the government will confiscate Church schools and health facilities as part of its nationalization program of the education and health systems.
He also cited that his activity in the school is increasingly threatened. The state has increasingly been exerting influence on the subject matter of the teaching, he alleged, adding that the schools were now compelled to use state-approved teaching materials and indoctrination was constantly on the increase.
Just as prolific, are deliberate campaigns to denigrate the Catholic Church in the public mind. The government has continued to vilify and attack the Church in the person of her representatives, the bishops and priests, the priest told the international Catholic pastoral charity, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). The state was adopting an “increasingly aggressive tone,” he said, and there was a “dramatically deepening gulf between the Church and the government.”