The announcement of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado as the recipient of 2025’s Nobel Peace Prize was received with joy and hope by many Catholics in her native country. Source: Crux.
Ms Machado was expected to win 2024’s presidential election, but the government barred her from running.
Ms Machado, a Catholic, threw her support behind Edmundo González, who performed convincingly in polls, but President Nicolás Maduro declared his own victory and kept his office for a third six-year term.
Ms Machado is still barred from holding any office in Venezuela, and has spent much of the time since the 2024 election in hiding.
Catholics are among those hopeful that the Nobel Prize is a harbinger of change.
“Those are signs of the times,” Giovanni Luisio Mass, a lay brother who heads the canonical association Order of the Poor Knights of Christ in Venezuela, said.
“We recently learned the date [October 19] of the canonisation of the first Venezuelan saints,” Blessed José Gregório Hernandez and Blessed Carmen Rendiles, Br Mass said.
“A number of United States vessels have approached our shore,” Br Mass also said, “and now the Nobel Prize for Corina Machado. It’s a spiritual battle. Changes will happen.”
Br Mass said there were large military contingents on the streets in all Venezuelan cities, discouraging public celebration of Ms Machado’s award.
On Monday, the government closed its embassy in Oslo, Norway, without giving a reason, days after the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Ms Machado as the recipient of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.
There are also many Catholics who support the Maduro regime.
“Our country is polarised and so is the Catholic Church,” Fr Geomar Gomez, a priest in the city of Tigre, said. He said the Nobel Peace Prize “can be seen as a light at the end of the tunnel, a light of hope and reconciliation”.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the award went to Ms Machado in recognition of “her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy” and praised her courageous decision to stay in Venezuela despite very trying circumstances.
“Despite serious threats against her life,” Committee Chairman Jørgen Watne Frydnes said, “she has remained in the country, a choice that has inspired millions.”
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Venezuelan Catholics among those quietly celebrating Nobel Peace laureate María Corina Machado (By Eduardo Campos Lima, Crux)
