Pope Francis, They Are Killing Us!

Dear Pope Francis:

I write to you from Venezuela on behalf of many grandfathers, grandmothers, fathers, mothers and children who are here, in this country God gave us as our homeland, suffering great injustices.

In this column that El Universal gives me, I write about the positive side of our country and our people, about the great many honest Venezuelans who live here and are working for a better society. And I always! try to pass on Hope to my readers through my lines, because I have great Faith in God, and when we have Faith we can never lose Hope.

But I tell you honestly, Pope Francis, we have reached a point where living in Venezuela means understanding that we (or worse still, our children or grandchildren) are just a few steps away from being murdered by criminals. Here many of us mothers live praying from the moment we get up until we go to bed, so that God and the Blessed Virgin will protect our families. The only good thing about this (if anything positive can be seen in such a misfortune) is that more and more Venezuelans (of all ages) are going to the sacrament of confession so as to be prepared for death.

In these 15 years of this government, criminals have murdered almost 200,000 people. Every year the figures rise. In 2013 more than 20,000 Venezuelans were murdered. That is why so many people have left their homeland or are thinking of leaving. And you know how hard it is to be forced to emigrate.

Last week society was shaken by the murder of a former Miss Venezuela and her husband in front of their five-year-old daughter, who was wounded. The day after that killing, a 40-year-old university professor and his 72-year-old mother were murdered. Almost a month ago, two children aged 9 and 12 were killed because they had witnessed a robbery. And I could go on writing pages of similar cases that happen every! day in every! corner of our country. Thousands of grandparents, parents and children weep with pain and helplessness for their loved ones. Such is our human helplessness that the murdered former Miss’s father said: “I am waiting for divine justice.”

The most serious thing is that we see no light at the end of this tunnel of death. Dozens of security plans have been launched, and none has worked. Criminals act as they please, armed to the teeth, and not all are punished. Our prisons are a true hell. Dangerous criminals are released while sick people are kept in prison. To make matters worse, public services here have collapsed, the roads are in terrible condition, people have to stand in line for hours to get basic foods, hospitals lack essential supplies, and many sick people cannot be treated or cannot find their medicines.

And all this is happening in a country where the oil bonanza has been the greatest in our history. The government itself acknowledged months ago that in less than a year 20 billion dollars were handed over to “companies” that did not make good use of the nation’s resources. While millions of Venezuelans struggle to survive, ill-gotten money is squandered on houses, trips, parties, planes, yachts… Oh! and on armored SUVs and bodyguards. You know what I am talking about, Pope Francis; you recently described perfectly the lives of the corrupt hypocrites and the great harm they do to society and to their own families.

On the other hand, the patient, ant-like work of our Catholic Church and its members has been admirable. There has been intense prayer and work to keep the peace in a country with great political polarization. In Venezuela people are praying as never before, and our churches are full. Our popular piety has been key for the Venezuelan people to pray together in churches and at huge religious gatherings, and to save us from a clash between brothers.

I am not going to ask you how long we must endure so much injustice, or how long all we can do is pray and abandon ourselves into God’s hands, because I know you cannot give me the answer. I only beg you to pray hard for your Venezuelan children. We will keep earnestly begging Jesus Christ to help us, because He himself tells us in the Gospel: “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and whoever seeks finds, and to whoever knocks it will be opened” (Mt 7:7-8).

Pope Francis, I want you to know that we love you very much and pray a great deal for you. I ask your blessing for all Venezuelans, and I take this opportunity to call on all people of good will to pray for our nation, so that Truth, Justice and Peace may soon reign in Venezuela, and the drama of crime may come to an end.