By Catholics for Catholics
On Monday, Pope Leo XIV received Maria Corina Machado, the opposition leader in Venezuela, at the Vatican. Machado was barred from participating in the disputed 2024 election of which Maduro claimed victory, although she backed a replacement candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, who is widely considered the actual winner.
In a statement released by her campaign, Machado said that she “asked [Pope Leo] to intercede for all Venezuelans who remain kidnapped and disappeared” and conveyed the legitimacy of Urrutia’s election in 2024, referring to him as “President Edmundo González Urrutia.”
Although many media publications refer to Machado as “far-right opposition”, she is a self-described “liberal” per her biography on X, although this might refer to classic liberalism, and she has a wide range of political positions and is probably more accurately a centrist.
Machado’s platform primarily focuses on the release of political prisoners and she is in favor of the mass privatization of government-run sectors, but she also “adheres to moderate positions on social issues such as gay marriage, which she accepts, and abortion.”
Face-to-Face: Pope Leo XIV and María Corina Machado 🇻🇦 🇻🇪
— ROME REPORTS (@romereports) January 12, 2026
The Venezuelan politician and activist was received in an audience by the Pontiff this morning at the Vatican Apostolic Palace 🏛️
Referring to Venezuela during the Angelus on Sunday, January 4, the Pope urged people to… pic.twitter.com/rTWC02EyLn
In 2018, Machado personally called upon Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri and Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu to use their “force and influence” to dismantle Maduro’s regime. Back in October she said that her government would move the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem and stated, “I promise one day, we’ll have a close relationship between Venezuela and Israel. That will be part of our support to the State of Israel.”
In 2020, Machado’s political party Vente Venezuela signed a pact with the Likud party in Israel “to bring the people of Israel closer to the people of Venezuela while advancing, together, the Western values to which both parties subscribe: freedom, liberty, and a market economy.” Supporters of Machado’s alliance with Israel say it is a necessary part of expelling Iran and Hezbollah from Venezuela.
Following Maduro’s capture by United States forces, Pope Leo XIV expressed that the action “must lead to the overcoming of violence, and to the pursuit of paths of justice and peace, guaranteeing the sovereignty of the country, ensuring the rule of law enshrined in its constitution, respecting the human and civil rights of each and every person, and working together to build a peaceful future of cooperation, stability and harmony, with special attention to the poorest who are suffering because of the difficult economic situation.”
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