ROME — Pope Leo XIV met with Venezuelan opposition chief and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado in a personal viewers on the Vatican on Monday.
The assembly, which hadn’t been beforehand included within the checklist of Leo’s deliberate appointments, was later listed by the Vatican in its each day bulletin, with out including particulars.
Machado is touring Europe and the US after she reemerged in December to just accept her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway.
Pope Leo, the primary American pontiff, has known as for Venezuela to stay an unbiased nation after U.S. forces captured former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from his compound in Caracas and flew him to New York to face federal prices of drug-trafficking.
Leo had stated he was following the developments in Venezuela with “deep concern,” and urged the safety of human and civil rights within the Latin American nation.
Venezuela’s opposition, backed by consecutive Republican and Democratic administrations within the U.S., had vowed for years to instantly change Maduro with one in every of their very own and restore democracy to the oil-rich nation. However U.S. President Donald Trump delivered them a heavy blow by permitting Maduro’s vp, Delcy Rodríguez, to imagine management.
In the meantime, most opposition leaders, together with Machado, are in exile or jail.
After successful the 2025 Nobel Prize for Peace, Machado stated she’d like to provide or share it with Trump.
Machado devoted the prize to Trump, together with the folks of Venezuela, shortly after it was introduced. Trump has coveted and brazenly campaigned for successful the Nobel Prize himself since his return to workplace.
