Pope Leo XIV meets with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado in a surprise audience

Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Pope Leo XIV met with Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion leader and No­bel Peace Prize win­ner María Co­ri­na Macha­do in a pri­vate au­di­ence at the Vat­i­can on Mon­day.

The meet­ing, which hadn’t been pre­vi­ous­ly in­clud­ed in the list of Leo’s planned ap­point­ments, was lat­er list­ed by the Vat­i­can in its dai­ly bul­letin, with­out adding de­tails.

Macha­do is tour­ing Eu­rope and the Unit­ed States af­ter she reemerged in De­cem­ber to ac­cept her No­bel Peace Prize in Nor­way.

Pope Leo, the first Amer­i­can pon­tiff, has called for Venezuela to re­main an in­de­pen­dent coun­try af­ter U.S. forces cap­tured for­mer Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro from his com­pound in Cara­cas and flew him to New York to face fed­er­al charges of drug-traf­fick­ing.

Leo had said he was fol­low­ing the de­vel­op­ments in Venezuela with “deep con­cern,” and urged the pro­tec­tion of hu­man and civ­il rights in the Latin Amer­i­can coun­try.

Venezuela’s op­po­si­tion, backed by con­sec­u­tive Re­pub­li­can and De­mo­c­ra­t­ic ad­min­is­tra­tions in the U.S., had vowed for years to im­me­di­ate­ly re­place Maduro with one of their own and re­store democ­ra­cy to the oil-rich coun­try. But U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump de­liv­ered them a heavy blow by al­low­ing Maduro’s vice pres­i­dent, Del­cy Ro­dríguez, to as­sume con­trol.

Af­ter win­ning the 2025 No­bel Prize for Peace, Macha­do said she’d like to give or share it with Trump.

Macha­do ded­i­cat­ed the prize to Trump, along with the peo­ple of Venezuela, short­ly af­ter it was an­nounced.

Trump has cov­et­ed and open­ly cam­paigned for win­ning the No­bel Prize him­self since his re­turn to of­fice. —ROME (AP)